Californian authorities asked thousands of people to evacuate Thursday, November 7, in the face of 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. Angeles. The fire was only 5% contained as of Thursday evening.
California once again surrounded by flames. Dozens of homes have been ravaged by the fire and it continues to spread in the hills of the northwest of the Los Angeles area, where it has consumed 8,300 hectares. THE «Moutain Fire» occurred Wednesday, November 6 near the town of Camarillo, California. Some 30,000 inhabitants live in the area. On Thursday, local authorities asked thousands of people to evacuate. More than 3,500 homes are threatened.
The fire was only 5% contained Thursday evening, according to authorities, driven by wind gusts, some measured at 130 km/h. A first estimate of the damage by the authorities shows 132 houses completely destroyed and around 88 badly damaged by the flames. A state of emergency was declared in the most affected areas by Governor Gavin Newsom, who visited the area on Thursday.
Cause still unknown
The cause of the fire is still unknown at this stage. 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. It should be lifted on Friday, they said Thursday evening.
Facing the furnace, helicopters dropped water on the region all night. Several hundred firefighters defended the houses with fire hoses. The fight against the flames is so intense that the terminals to which the fire trucks are connected were dried up for a time by demand on Wednesday evening. “We emptied the water systems”explained Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner during a press conference. So his teams were forced to transport water to different homes.
And if they were not engulfed in flames, residents were certainly deprived of electricity: companies cut power to tens of thousands of customers in the region. The strategy is common in California during high winds, to reduce the risk of new fires that toppled power lines could cause.
This new fire takes place in a destructive context: after two winters of respite, thanks to the rains, California is experiencing a very active fire season. So much so that the vegetation reformed thanks to the precipitation of the last two years has dried up. And has become a powerful fuel. This summer, the Golden State suffered from several heat waves, yet another sign of climate change: in July-August, it was ravaged by the fourth largest fire in its history. THE «Park Fire» had ravaged the north of the state, reducing hundreds of thousands of hectares to smoke in just a few days.
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