Mountain Fire Destroys Dozens of Homes in Ventura County, CA

LOS ANGELES — Residents in the foothills above Camarillo who returned to their neighborhoods days after fleeing the Mountain fire were greeted by nothing more than devastation.

More than 130 structures were lost, the majority of them houses, when flames marched through the area cementing the fire as one of the most destructive a Southern California neighborhood has seen in years. More than 80 other structures were also damaged.

Entire homes were hollowed out and the contents inside — photographs, family heirlooms and personal treasures — were reduced to ash. Now fire officials are working to determine the full scope of the ruin.

“It’s a big system shock, almost like you’re in a bad dream,” said resident Brittanie Bibby. “You just want to wake up.”

The Mountain fire had burned more than 20,700 acres as of Friday afternoon, with parts of Camarillo and Moorpark hit hardest. The greatest devastation occurred Wednesday when the fire charged unchecked through some neighborhoods, with erratic wind gusts sparking spot fires well beyond the main blaze. Winds were so powerful that retardant-dropping aircraft could not fly for several hours.

Fierce Santa Ana winds, which had sent the blaze racing toward homes earlier in the week, were beginning to ease Friday. The diminished gusts lessened the chance of the fire spreading farther, but threats still remain. The fire is only 7% contained and more than 11,700 structures are still threatened, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

While red flag warnings — alerts for extreme fire danger — expired Friday morning, the National Weather Service said gusty northeast winds would continue through Saturday morning across parts of Ventura and Los Angeles counties, especially in the mountains. Gusts up to 40 mph would remain possible through Friday evening, but generally, peak winds were forecast to drop between 15 to 25 mph. In contrast, on Wednesday, sustained winds in the area were between 25 to 40 mph, with gusts reaching well above 60 mph, fueled by the fiercest wind event the region has seen in years.

But planes were back in the air Thursday and Friday, and with easing winds, firefighters were able to make their first real inroads against the blaze.

Crews were hopeful that Friday would bring increased containment, but officials noted that the fire’s most active sections are now burning through the rugged Santa Susana Mountains, adding new challenges to the firefight. Humidity also remains low, which can help fuel wildfire conditions, though it was expected to slowly build over the weekend.

“Firefighters are opportunists,” Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Tony McHale said Friday. “Today is all about aggressive suppression.”

Even as it seemed the tide could be turning in the battle against the blaze, the painful process of assessing the damage in neighborhoods ravaged by the fire is just beginning.

In Camarillo Heights, the remains of burned houses dotted the landscape, seemingly engulfed at random. While crews tried to defend as many homes as possible, they were hindered at times by challenging terrain and poor access to water, McHale said.

Climate change has supercharged wildfires, causing them to burn faster and hotter and, at times, resulting in more catastrophic damage.

Menlo Park Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen, who spent a decade as the chief in Ventura County, said firefighters prioritize evacuations before defending structures. It used to be that there was more time to extinguish a fire before it became life-threatening, he said.

“Mother Nature, right now, is making our areas drier,” he said. “It makes the fire unstoppable.”

Some families lost every possession in the blaze.

Bibby, her husband Kenneth and their 15-month-old son had moved into their Camarillo home from Arizona two weeks ago after she inherited it from her father. They had filled up their credit cards working to turn the aging property into a safe place for their family.

By Thursday, it was gone.

“All of our family memories,” she said, “all of our possessions, Social Security cards, death certificates, birth certificates, my husband’s father’s ashes, my father’s ashes and my mother’s ashes.”

Even the baby’s inhaler burned. But, she said, “being a mom, I don’t really have a choice to panic or to not think through the steps.”

Nearby, Breanna Hale stood atop the rubble where her childhood home used to stand. She was devastated.

“My grandma — my mom’s mom — just passed away very recently, and this was their house,” she said. “It’s very hard. ... This is a family home.”

On Wednesday morning, Hale was across town when she got the phone call to evacuate. With her mother in the hospital, no one was at the house, and Hale rushed back, hoping to grab treasured items. When she got to a road closure, she began to run toward the home but was soon stopped by firefighters.

“I was willing to go into burning flames, and they would not let me up here to get anything,” Hale said.

Hale, who is adopted, had just three pictures of her birth parents. Two of them were in that house.

She expressed relief at having one remaining photo: “I’m just praying that things happen for a reason, and I got really lucky on some stuff.”

She visited the site of the house Thursday afternoon for the first time with a shovel in her hand, sifting through the smoldering ashes looking for anything of sentimental interest.

“My mom, she’s fighting cancer,” Hale said. “So I’m just trying to find the things that matter most to her.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom spent Thursday meeting with first responders and visiting communities affected by the blaze. Around 5 p.m., he proclaimed a state of emergency in Ventura County to help mobilize resources to combat the fast-moving fire.

On Friday, a thick blanket of smoke hung over the the county forcing many to stay indoors and dozens of schools to close. All of Ventura County and much of northern Los Angeles County remain under air quality alerts for unhealthy conditions through at least Saturday afternoon.

Authorities are still trying to determine what sparked the fire.

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(Los Angeles Times staff writers Richard Winton, Noah Goldberg, Nathan Solis and Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.)

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