Firefighters can expect no help from rain
Amassive blaze threatening Santa Barbara, including many homes of celebrities, remains largely out of control, and the weather won’t help firefighters contain it this week.
“The thing that is troublesome is that next week, we’re supposed to have a dry spell and elevated temperatures. There’s no rain expected in the next sevendays,” said Charles Esseling of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The fast- moving Thomas Fire had scorched 173,000 acres as of Sunday evening. It prompted mandatory evacuation orders in two wealthy oceanside towns near Santa Barbara.
The area is popular with starstudded names. Oprah Winfrey owns a home in Montecito, and Ellen DeGeneres and wife Portia de Rossi bought an oceanfront estate for $ 18.6 million in Carpinteria in October.
George Lucas, AshtonKutcher and Mila Kunis also own homes there. It was not known whether any were there during the fires.
The fire, which straddled Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, was 15% contained as of Sunday afternoon, Esseling said.
One person died inVenturaCounty on Saturday, Esseling said. More than 750 structures have been destroyed and 15,000 are threatened. There are 4,435 fire personnel from 10 states fighting the flames at an estimated cost of $ 25 million, he said. Though smaller fires plagued areas closer to Los Angeles, Esseling described the Thomas Fire as “the granddaddy of them all.”
The temperature inMontecito was 81 Sunday, and the National Weather Service predicted temperatures in Santa Barbara to hit 83 on Tuesday.
For comparison, the fires that burned in California’s wine country in Napa and Sonoma Counties in October consumed about 110,000 acres.
The fire cut power to more than 85,000 people because of damage to transmission lines.
Fighting the fire is difficult because although the winds have calmed down somewhat, they sporadically pick up. Gusts of up to 35 mph have caused the fire to spread erratically.
“The fire goes in all different directions; we don’t know where it’s going to come from,” Esseling said.
The area is especially at risk because it has not burned since 1932, and thick brush has built up. The brush is , very dry because of a lack of winter rains, he said.
Santa Barbara County, which dubs itself “the American Riviera,” lies just north of Los Angeles.
The area under evacuation expanded three times over Saturday night and Sunday morning. More than 88,000 people have fled the fire, and the cost of fighting it is at least $ 25 million.
The Santa Barbara County FireDepartment tweeted photos of homes burning in Carpinteria early Sunday and crews fighting a wall of flame advancing on homes at 6 a. m. PT.
Red flag warnings were in effect Sunday for large swaths of Southern California, fromAnaheim in the south upthrough LosAngeles, Burbank, Oxnard and Santa Barbara. The National Weather Service designation is the highest alert possible for weather conditions that can result in “extreme fire behavior.” They include low humidity and strong winds.
Under normal weather conditions, this season should be a time of rain in California, but it has been largely dry. Gov. Jerry Brown, speaking at the Ventura County Fairgrounds on Saturday, called winter fires “the new normal.”
“We’re about ready to have firefighting at Christmas,” he said. “This is very odd and unusual.”