Firefighters continue to progress by fighting a burning forest fire in the hills near the Los Angeles and Ventura County line, allowing the thousands of residents evacuated to return home on Friday evening while public health officials warned potentially unhealthy air in the region during the weekend.
Friday at 6 p.m. on Friday, the crews reached 28% confinement on the 5,370 acres canyon fire, which burned near Castaic, which broke out in the middle of a heat wave on Thursday and destroyed at least two buildings and injured three firefighters, according to the fire service of the county.
The evacuation orders affecting approximately 2,700 residents were demoted to warnings, while the evacuation warnings affecting approximately 14,000 residents were raised, according to spokesperson for the fire service of Ventura, Andrew Dowd.
“We have made huge progress on this fire; we are very proud of the hard work that was made by men and women on the ground,” said Dowd. “I think residents of the region can be grateful to the firefighters who came here to serve them.”
At 6.20 p.m., only one vehicle ride on the scene of the fire and a person was taken to the hospital to be treated, said Dowd. The fire service of the county of Ventura investigates the circumstances surrounding the incident and did not say if the injured person was a firefighter.
According to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the smoke from the canyon fire causes unhealthy air quality in the County of Los Angeles, mainly in the corridor of Highway 5 near Lake Castaic. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued a smoke notice until 11 a.m. on Sunday and urges everyone in areas where they can see or feel smoke to limit or avoid outdoor activities.
The managers of the county of Ventura declared that the fire fled before 2 p.m. Thursday – when temperatures culminated at around 100 degrees – northeast of Piru, a small town not formed in society not far from the Castaic junction. He then accused the east, threatening houses and temporarily prompted evacuation orders in the communities of the County of Los Angeles of Val Verde, Hasley Canyon and Castaic.
Taking advantage of the cooler temperatures Thursday evening until Friday morning, the crews were able to break through the rapid fire that reached several thousand acres in a few hours, Dowd said. But he said that the coming fight remains difficult, given the warm weather, the accidental ground and a dry landscape which, together, can promote extreme growth of fire.
“We see thrusts in various parts of the fire,” said Dowd on Friday morning. “We still have a humidity of the record fuel in the region, so we do not drop our guard.”
Two small structures, probably liaisses or dependencies, have been confirmed, said Dowd. Officials have confirmed any damaged houses or business, but the scene video has shown that some buildings destroyed or engulfed in flames. It was not immediately clear if they were additional damage from the two small buildings.
A helicopter falls late on a hot spot on the hill above the Castaic high school while fighting against canyon fire in Castaic on Friday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Dowd said that it expects confinement to increase on Friday evening while firefighters double the work that has been done so far – “So it is patrol, cleaning, strengthening of containment lines, the fight against hand points and escape as they occur, and continuing to defend the structure and protection of the structure that may be at risk.”
Residents of the Val Verde region said that the flames were visible Thursday from the western edge of the district, but the threat seemed to have calmed down a bit on Friday morning, although the air remained thick of soot and ash.
“There is a lot of smoke. The air is really, really bad,” Jennifer Elkins, president of Val Verde Civic Assn., Her neighborhood was under an evacuation order Thursday afternoon, but was able to return home on Friday.
“We are sort of locked up inside and keeping an eye on things,” said Elkins. “It’s a really difficult fire season, and I’m really happy that the fire service really takes every fire seriously. … It is a fairly great threat to the community.”
The canyon fire quickly became one of the largest fires triggered during the days of intense heat in southern California. North of the counties of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, the much larger Gifford fire burned more than 100,000 acres.
Unfortunately for firefighters on the ground, the heat should persist in the weekend, although temperatures can lower one degree or two.
Temperatures were to peak on Friday at 98 degrees around the fire of the canyon, and this heat plus the winds, the low humidity and the dry landscape would continue to create high fire conditions throughout the weekend, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist from the national meteorological service in Oxnard.
“He is ripe for fires and fires,” said Wofford.
A team of the hand is fighting the flames of the canyon fire in Castaic.
(Eric Thayer / Getty Images)
“Although a few degrees of cooling are expected throughout the weekend, a very hot air mass will remain in place. An onshore flow regime will prevent temperatures from exceeding record levels, but temperatures should stay above seasonal norms while high pressure linger in the southwest of the United States,” said the meteorological service in a forecast on Friday morning.
The fire was initially reported to approximately 30 acres, but in about two hours, this estimate increased to more than 1,000 acres, according to officials from the county of Ventura. At midnight, he spread over 4,856 acres and had sank east in the direction of Castaic and Highway 5 of the county of the. Friday, it increased by 514 additional acres.
More than 400 firefighters were assigned to the incident, fire officials said.
A resident sprayed in his house while the firefighters are preparing to fight the fire flames in Castaic.
(Eric Thayer / Getty Images)
The American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns about the proximity of the fire with the Pitchés detention center, where around 5,000 prisoners are hosted in four prisons. The center is east of Highway 5 and fell just outside an evacuation warning area on the first night of the fire.
The main lawyer, Melissa Camacho, said that she was “seriously concerned” by the growing fire.
“Hughes fire in January burned less than half a thousand prisons and not a single incarcerated person, he was evacuated,” Camacho told Times. “It is heartbreaking that, less than eight months later, the 5,000 people in prisons and their loved ones will spend another white night watching a fire and praying that it does not reach them.”
The Sheriff’s Department of the County of Los Angeles, which operates the establishment, said that it actively monitors the fire conditions and was in constant communication with fire and county managers.
“Similar to the evacuation plans implemented at Pepperdine University in Malibu, the fire service indicated that an shelter in place is the safest option for staff and guard prisoners, given the type of construction of the building and the current fire behavior,” said the spokesperson Nicole Nishida in a press release. The area around the building was rid of Brush and has a large defensible space, she said.
On Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state had obtained federal emergency management support to help pay the fight against fire. The fire management assistance grant can provide federal funding for up to 75% of eligible fire control costs, including spending on field camps, the use of equipment, supplies and mobilization and demobilization activities, according to FEMA.
