Los Angeles Times
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LOS ANGELES — A new fire exploded Wednesday north of Castaic, quickly charring more than 9,400 acres and forcing thousands to flee their homes amid a month of extreme fire conditions that have plagued Southern California.
The Hughes fire started off Lake Hughes Road just before 11 a.m. and quickly prompted evacuations orders in and around Castaic Lake, which by afternoon extended toward Ventura County to the west and near Sandberg to the north. More than 31,000 people were ordered to evacuate and another 20,000 were in areas where evacuation warnings were issued.
The fire was initially reported at 50 acres but grew to 5,000 acres in the first two hours, fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. By 5 p.m. it had surpassed 9,000 acres with 0% containment, said L.A. County Fire Department Chief Anthony Marrone.
A stretch of Interstate 5 was closed for several hours, snarling traffic. It reopened in both directions around 6 p.m., while the off-ramps at Lake Hughes Road and Parker Road remained closed, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Air quality was in the unhealthy range in the area of the Hughes fire, according to the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District. An alert was issued Wednesday afternoon for Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Oxnard, Piru, Santa Paula, Simi Valley and Ventura.
A smoke advisory was also issued for a wide swath of northwestern L.A. County from the Santa Monica and Malibu coastline to the south up through the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita and into the Castaic Lake area.
More than 4,000 firefighting personnel are assigned to the incident, and so far there have been no reports of structures damaged, Marrone said.
Traffic was snarled out of Castaic as residents in hillside communities rushed to escape the advancing flames. On Wednesday afternoon, the blaze forced officials to close the 5 Freeway in both directions through the Grapevine. The highway was closed southbound at Grapevine Road in southern Kern County and northbound at California 126.
Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, said during a livestream Wednesday that the predicted winds in the evening could drive the fire into Ventura County.
“This is not a good place to have a fire under northeast winds, because there is an almost contiguous, very dense fuel bed all in this region,” Swain said.
Moments after the Hughes fire exploded, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami said he raced out of the Antelope Valley Courthouse in Lancaster and drove back to Santa Clarita, where hundreds of kids were being evacuated from West Creek Academy as the sky overhead darkened with smoke.
“You had some parents crying. You had younger kids ... they were crying. You could see the smoke from the school. Everybody is kind of on edge,” said Hatami, whose children are 8 and 10.
The veteran prosecutor, whose wife is a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who had been dispatched to help with evacuations, said his entire family is experiencing “fire fatigue” after more than two weeks spent waiting for wind-driven flames to threaten their home. Their home is in an evacuation warning zone, and Hatami said he has bags ready by the door.
“Everybody is on edge. It’s a lot. I love California. I love Los Angeles, but this is definitely stressful,” he said. “It’s hard to go to work when you’re worried your house could burn down and your kids are at school, and your wife is out there, and you don’t know what’s going to happen with her.”
Along Pine Crest Place in Castaic, residents rushed to load belongings into their cars to flee as winds continued to push the fire south. One man told KTLA-TV he was planning to stick around as long as possible and was preparing to use a garden hose to spray down his roof to protect it from flying embers.
Meanwhile, a Los Angeles County Sheriff Department patrol car drove through the neighborhood announcing evacuations orders over a loudspeaker.
“I’m just praying our house doesn’t burn down,” another resident told the station.
An employee who picked up the phone at Pilot Travel Center just after noon said they were working to close the truck stop off the 5 Freeway on Castaic Road.
“The sky is black and we’re getting everyone out of the shop,” she said.
Lake Hills Community Church Pastor David Cummings coordinated with his congregants over the phone, helping them find lodging and praying with them as they left their homes. Of the 140 church members who attend Lake Hills Community Church, about half of them live in the area where evacuations have been issued, he said.
He could see the fire and smoke on remote security camera footage from the church that overlooks Castaic Lake.
“We’re keeping in touch with them and people are going over to help them get their needed goods,” Cummings said from his home in Valencia. “We’re providing homes to the other half of congregation. Some are going to their families, but we’re making sure they have a place to stay and all their needs are being met.”
The fire was burning about five miles north of the county’s Castaic jail complex, forcing deputies at one point to move inmates from a barracks-style facility at the complex to a brick facility located at the same complex. The jail was listed in the evacuation zone by the afternoon.
It’s unclear how jail officials would carry out evacuations. For years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has struggled with a shortage of inmate transport buses, due to an aging fleet that has become increasingly difficult to repair.
By late last year, officials told The Times that only 20 of the department’s 82 buses were operational.
Though the county approved funding for 20 new buses in September 2023, the first did not arrive until December of last year. The remaining buses are slated to arrive every few weeks until the order is expected to be completed in August.
On Wednesday, a department spokeswoman said that jail officials could potentially use state and other local resources, but it was not immediately clear what resources that would entail.
Elsewhere, Castaic Union School District principals who were at a training meeting when the Hughes brush fire broke out were told to immediately return to their schools.
Northlake Hills Elementary received an evacuation order while the principals returned to their schools and assisted parents and guardians who arrived to pick up their children. Students from Castaic Middle School and Castaic Elementary School were evacuated to a Ralphs parking lot at Hasley Canyon to wait for their parents, according to the California Highway Patrol.
As many as eight helicopters were dropping water on the fire to slow the spread of the flames. Strike teams were also mobilizing to protect homes in the path of the fire. CalFire has deployed 20 prepositioned engines, four hand crews, four bulldozers and aircraft to support the response to the Hughes fire, according to the agency.
“There are lots of hillsides,” L.A. County Fire Capt. Sheila Kelliher Berkoh said. “It’s very rugged terrain.”
But strong winds in the area proved to be a challenge for firefighters. Wind gusts reached 31 mph Wednesday afternoon in Castaic and were expected to increase over the next several hours, said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
Forecasts show that gusts could reach up to 40 mph in the evening and even faster overnight, according to the weather service.
As classes were letting out at Valencia High on Wednesday afternoon, sheriff’s deputies and campus security personnel began readying the school’s gym as an evacuation center. A few hours later, the evacuation center moved to Hart High School in Santa Clarita after the campus in Valencia ended up in an evacuation zone.
Taylor Lincoln and her mother, Danielle, arrived at the campus in Valencia at 1 p.m. Wednesday with their two dogs, Dakota and Finn, and their cat, Lily, after being told to leave their home just an hour earlier. Neither had a bag packed and instead fled with a few important papers and the clothes on their backs.
“What this shows me is to be ready next time,” Danielle said. “To be more prepared. It’s reality now.”
It is not clear what sparked the fire. The blaze is burning in the same area that was charred in the Route fire in 2022. That fire, which ignited during a heat wave in late August, burned 5,200 acres and forced evacuations in Castaic.
The Hughes fire was one of two that began Wednesday amid persistent red flag conditions in the region.
In San Diego County, a fire that broke out near Rancho Bernardo and grew to roughly four acres and briefly triggered evacuations before its forward progress was stopped.
Red flag fire weather warnings — which began Monday morning across Southern California — will continue through much of Southern California through Friday morning, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
A storm expected to arrive this weekend is forecast to bring some moisture to Southern California’s parched landscape. But forecasters have warned it will not end the fire season.
Because the rain is expected to be light, the risk of debris flows in burned areas is low. There’s a chance a thunderstorm could emerge directly over a recently burned area — creating a risk of landslides — but it’s not likely, Kittell said.
Still, Los Angeles city and county officials have started preparing for the rain. Public works in the coming days will install barriers, remove debris and divert runoff from the stormwater system into the sewer system, where it can be treated. Crews are also clearing drains and roadways, placing sandbags to shore up vulnerable infrastructure and preparing debris basins for the incoming storm, officials said Wednesday.
The Palisades fire, which ignited more than two weeks ago, leveled a huge swath of Pacific Palisades burning more than 23,400 acres and destroying at least 6,662 structures, according to Cal Fire. The blaze was 68% contained as of Wednesday.
The Eaton fire, which charred a devastating path through the Altadena and Pasadena areas, destroying 9,418 structures, was 91% contained as of Wednesday.
“Rains are in the forecast and the threat of mud and debris flow in our fire impacted communities is real,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said during a news conference Wednesday. “We have to be prepared.”
For recently burned areas, Kittell said, the rain could serve as a practice run in preparing for risks that are likely to remain for the next one to two years, after which the risk of debris flows and other landslide risks is substantially lowered.
Rainfall rates need to be at around half an inch per hour or more to start causing debris flows of significance, Kittell said. Rates that are lower — like a quarter of an inch per hour — are less significant, “maybe some muddy water moving over some roads,” he said.
Although meteorologists say the risk of debris flows in the burn areas is low, it’s also very unlikely the rain will snuff out the fire season.
“If we get one more little dry spell, it’ll pretty much negate any benefit from this rain,” Kittell said.
That dry spell may be just around the corner. The longer-term outlook suggests that, on the heels of this storm, there could be more weeks of dry weather going into early February.
There is also a 10% to 20% chance of thunderstorms and, with it, the chance of isolated but brief, heavy rain. With a thunderstorm, “heavy downpours, with rates maybe approaching a half-inch per hour” are possible, Kittell said.
“The vast majority of areas will not see this kind of situation,” he added, but if there are thunderstorms, “most likely we’ll see a spot — or two or three — that do get conditions like this.”
Residents whose homes back up to charred hillsides can request the county assess their property and the condition of the slope and advise whether any mitigation needs to be done, said Mark Pestrella, the Los Angeles County Public Works director.
He emphasized that Angelenos in burn-scarred areas should use caution during upcoming rain events.
“Let me be clear, if you live in an area and you’re in the home, and there is a slope behind your home that is burned, and it’s maybe 20 feet or more in height, and it is adjacent to the property in any direction, your best bet is not to be in that home when it rains,” Pestrella said.
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(Times staff writers James Queally, Richard Winton, Kevin Baxter and Stacy Perman contributed to this report.)
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