California authorities asked thousands of people to evacuate Thursday, facing a massive fire that destroyed more than a hundred homes and continues to worsen in the hills of the northwest of the Los Angeles region.
The Mountain Fire broke out near the town of Camarillo on Wednesday. It is burning in an area where about 30,000 people live, according to Ventura County firefighters.
Its cause is still unknown, but the flames spread quickly thanks to powerful winds, with gusts of up to 130 km/h, which should calm down during the night from Thursday to Friday.
It threatens more than 3,500 homes and has already consumed more than 8,300 hectares. As of Thursday evening, the fire was only 5% contained, according to authorities.
A first estimate of the damage by the authorities shows 132 houses completely destroyed and around 88 badly damaged by the flames.
“We stayed up all night watching what was happening. I didn’t sleep,” Erica Preciado told local television station KTLA, evacuating the area with her family.
“We’re just trying to get shelter. I didn’t even know what to take. I just put everything I could in my car,” she added, on the verge of tears.
A state of emergency was declared in the most affected areas by Governor Gavin Newsom, who visited the area on Thursday.
“Everything is gone,” said a man with a broken voice on KTLA, who lost his home where he had lived for 27 years.
After two rainy winters which provided a relative respite, California is experiencing a very active fire season this year.
The vegetation reformed thanks to the precipitation of the last two years has dried up and becomes a powerful fuel.
This summer, the “Golden State” suffered from several heat waves, signs of global warming.
In July-August, it suffered the fourth largest fire in its history.
– Dry fire hydrants –
Ventura County fire officials said they are devoting all their resources to this fire.
Helicopters dropped water on the area throughout the night. Several hundred firefighters defended the houses with fire hoses.
The fight against the flames is so intense that the hydrants to which the fire trucks connect were dried up by demand at one point on Wednesday evening.
“We flushed the water systems,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said at a news conference Thursday. This forced his teams to carry water to different homes.
Faced with the flames, Dawn Deleon had only a few moments to flee with her six dogs.
“We saw the neighbors’ houses burning and we said it was time to leave,” she told KTLA. “We were gone for five minutes and then we turned around to get my phone and the house was already on fire.”
The flames are driven by the Santa Ana winds, hot, dry gusts from the desert, typical of fall in Southern California.
Local weather services issued an alert this week, warning of the risk of fires. The red alert should be lifted on Friday, they said Thursday evening.
These winds should gradually lose their strength on Thursday, before “a considerable reduction” in the evening, explained meteorologist Rich Thompson.
Power companies cut power to tens of thousands of customers in the area, a common strategy in California during high winds, to reduce the risk of new fires caused by toppled power lines.
