Thousands flee as wildfire ‘beast’ grows to California’s third-largest

VENTURA, California — A raging California wildfire powered by fierce winds grew into the third-largest in state history on Saturday as forced evacuations turned neighborhoods into ghost towns and ash fell in some areas like heavy snow.

High winds and dry conditions were expected to remain through the weekend to power the so-called Thomas Fire in Southern California. It has destroyed more than 1,000 structures and threatened 18,000 more since erupting on Dec 4, including homes in the wealthy enclave of Montecito just outside the coastal city of Santa Barbara.

“It is a beast,” Santa Barbara County Fire Department Division Chief Martin Johnson told a news conference. “But we will kill it,” he said. Nearly 8,500 personnel using nearly 1,000 engines and 32 helicopters were battling the blaze, which was 40 percent contained on Saturday evening. It has become the seventh-most destructive in state history, officials said.

A new evacuation order was issued for parts of Santa Barbara County on Saturday as high winds whipped the fire through bone-dry terrain.

In Montecito, smoke billowing from nearby canyons and pushed by the high winds choked the air, hindering aircraft from dropping flame retardant, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said.

Kelly Hoover, Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s spokeswoman, said that authorities dispatched hundreds of crews to Montecito, checking the communities door to door and ordering residents to leave the evacuation zone.

She warned that the situation was really dangerous for their lives since the Santa Ana winds mixed with the Sundowner, a northerly offshore wind in Santa Barbara.

“When the sundowners surface in that area and the fire starts running down slopes, you are not going to stop it,” Mark Brown, an operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told reporters at a news briefing on Saturday morning.

“And we are not going to stand in front of it and put firefighters in untenable situations,” he added.

The wildfire forced many schools to close for days, shut roads and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. It was also responsible for poor air quality throughout Southern California.

An evacuation order for the city of Ventura, which was hit hard in the first days of the fire, was lifted on Saturday morning.

“Our backyard, it’s like a rain of ash. I don’t even want to step back there,” said Janet Harrington, 56, an artist and writer who grew up and lives in Ventura.

Her son Ryan said: “I can count 10 people who lost their homes. My best friend from high school, his mom’s house burned down.”

The total cost of fighting the fire had come to more than $110 million by Saturday evening, as flames blazing over steep hills lit up the night skies.