Winds fuel twin wildfires around LA
SIMI VALLEY: Firefighters in Southern California braced for another day of gusting desert winds on Thursday as they confronted twin wildfires that have displaced thousands of residents in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The region’s Santa Ana winds have been so extraordinarily dry, powerful and prolonged that the National Weather Service was moved to create a new alert level, issuing an “extreme red flag warning” through Thursday evening in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The Getty Fire broke out near the Getty Centre art museum in Los Angeles on Monday morning, burning chaparral up and down the mountain slopes around a major highway.
Officials ordered the evacuation of more than 10,000 homes in some of the city’s richest neighbourhoods, although they began allowing some people to return on Wednesday as about 40 per cent of the 745-acre fire was brought under control.
The Easy Fire ignited early on
Wednesday, sending flames racing up to the walls of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library atop a mountain in Ventura County’s Simi Valley northwest of Los Angeles. Some 30,000 residents were ordered to evacuate, along with an unknown number of horses in an area known for its ranches. Officials at the Getty
Centre and the Reagan Library were confident both complexes would survive unscathed, thanks to various fire-prevention systems.
These include, in the Reagan Library’s case, an annual visitation by a herd of goats that eats away the surrounding flammable scrub.