‘I saw this bigger ball of fire ... explode’
Firefighters endure a second day of tripledigit heat in Santa Clarita. Some people flee; others sit tight.
Crews battling a wildfire in Santa Clarita faced red flag conditions Monday as temperatures climbed into the triple digits, humidity dropped and winds gusted toward homes and businesses as fast as 30 mph, officials said.
“Conditions are right for a fire to spread,” National Weather Service meteorologist Tom Fisher said. “After that wetter than normal winter we had, we have extra grasses growing and now those grasses have pretty much dried out.”
Following temperatures that reached over 100 degrees across Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley on Monday, an onshore flow was expected to move in overnight and begin cooling the region.
Before that, however, more than 400 firefighters battled the Placerita fire south of the 14 Freeway near Placerita Canyon Road, under the sweltering sun.
The fire had chewed through an estimated 870 acres and was 57% contained by Monday afternoon, officials said. It had knocked out power and triggered mandatory evacuations for dozens of residents Sunday night.
The fire started Sunday afternoon when a motorist drove her car into a tree, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The blaze jumped the freeway and sent up a towering plume of gray smoke that was visible for miles.
Laura Amara, 48, had been hosting a baby shower at her house when the fire began.
“It started with my girlfriend having me come to the backyard, where she saw a little puff of flames come up. And I saw this bigger ball of fire all of a sudden kind of explode,” she said Monday.
Amara went back and told her 40 guests the news. “Um, we’re all leaving,” she said.
“I was worried about my house, but ... you live in Southern California, you live in dry conditions, just like earthquakes, you get fire too,” Amara said. “But when it burns, I want everyone out the house and to be safe.”
Running Horse Road resident Mark McCloud, 56, also said that he and his neighbors were used to dealing with seasonal fires.
“In Santa Clarita, this is how we weed whack,” he joked. “We just let the fire do it.”
Despite being cautioned to evacuate during the height of the fire, McCloud chose to stick around.
“We have four houses, my relatives and myself,” he said. “My mother lives down the street and my motherin-law lives at the top of the street. So one thing we did is all the houses have roof sprinklers.”
After smelling smoke on Sunday, McCloud said, he headed up to his mother-inlaw’s house.
“When we got up there, we took the hoses and the shovels and just started working, putting out the fires,” McCloud said.
That’s when he saw the next-door neighbor’s home start to catch fire. “We just hit it with the hoses and buckets, because the hose only reaches so far, and we got all that out,” McCloud said.
Neighbor Dennis Brazzil, 67, said he welcomed the help — and likes living in Santa Clarita despite the danger.
“It’s worth the agony of the fire,” he said. “We’ve been here 20 years, and fires happen almost [every] six, seven years. So we’ve been through a few of them already.”