S. Calif. cloaked in flame, smoke
Air quality called dangerous; Trump declares disaster
OJAI, Calif. — Wildfires continued to ravage California for a fifth day Friday, again cloaking the southern part of the state in nightmarish flame and towering smoke visible from miles away.
Public health officials warned of dangerously bad air quality and said it was particularly threatening for the elderly and children and people with respiratory or heart conditions. Los Angeles County issued smoke advisories, urging people to remain indoors when possible.
Phil Moyal, an air quality specialist in Ventura County, said the smoke was causing hazardous conditions there, especially in the Ojai Valley, which is surrounded by mountains trapping the smoke.
“When we say ‘off the charts’ we mean off the charts,” Moyal said Friday about the air quality measurements. “I would not want to be there too long ... I would tell people to go to Seattle. There are not many places in Southern California that are clean or will stay clean.”
President Donald Trump on Friday declared an emergency in California, ordering federal aid to the state in response to a request from Gov. Jerry Brown. Firefighters, joined by reinforcements from outside the state, battled blazes that cropped up along a stretch of southwestern California greater than the distance between Washington, D.C., and Trenton, N.J.
The largest fires Friday combined to burn across nearly 250 square miles.
More than a half-dozen blazes in Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties destroyed more than 500 structures, sent 212,000 people fleeing and left thousands without power.
On Friday, the Ventura County medical examiner’s office identified a body found at the site of a car accident Wednesday night as a 70-year-old Virginia Pesola of Santa Paula, the only death in the wildfires to date.
She died of blunt-force injuries with terminal smoke inhalation and thermal injuries, officials said. The death is being investigated.
The Thomas Fire in Ventura County — the biggest blaze in the state — continued to grow and threaten a host of cities in its path. Further south, authorities in San Diego County ordered thousands to leave as they fought the 4,100-acre Lilac Fire, which burned three civilians and injured two firefighters.
The winds fanning the flames were lighter Friday, but forecasts call for them to increase again through Sunday. Red flag warnings of heightened fire risk will remain in place for at least Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Sunday, when winds could peak at around 50 mph. That could combine with extremely low humidity to create more erratic fire behavior and severe conditions for firefighters on the ground.
Across the region, people who fled recounted fire and smoke that seemed to come from everywhere. The sounds of helicopters woke Patricia Hampton and her boyfriend at their house in Ventura as the Thomas Fire was growing. When they looked outside, the ground was covered in ash, the air so smoky it was hard to breathe, she said. They hopped on bicycles and tried to flee.
“We didn’t know what had happened,” Hampton, 48, said at a temporary shelter at the Ventura County Fairgrounds on Thursday, two days after leaving home. “We rode down into town trying to make sense of what we were seeing — police everywhere, firetrucks, helicopters. It was like a war zone. You could hear transformers blowing up.”
In Los Angeles, Lili Hamedi said she went into her yard during the week and found her swimming pool filled with ash.
“We were surrounded by the fires,” said Hamedi, who lives in the Encino area. “I heard the fire. I never knew you could hear a fire.”
The smoke spreading through Ventura pushed Jet Kauffman to pack up her two dogs, two cats and valuables into a car earlier this week.
“Everything is literally burning around you and it’s raining ash and ember, and things are just lighting on fire around you and you can’t really do much to stop it,” Kauffman said.
Her boyfriend, Shaun Kelleher, stayed behind to protect the Victorian house he bought in 2012. He looked out a back window and saw the glow creeping over the hillside, consuming palm trees in its path. The 32-year-old, ignoring mandatory evacuation orders, threw a scarf over his mouth and goggles over his glasses and ran outside to douse the home and yard with a hose.
“I saw a house light on fire, and that’s when I started to freak out, because there was no one around,” Kelleher said.
A second house burst into flames, then a third, and then an apartment complex. Fire and smoke were getting closer to his house and the wind was picking up. Kauffman, at a friend’s house, called Kelleher and pleaded with him to leave.
Then he heard a sound that filled him with relief: sirens.
Some 20 fire trucks pulled into the area, he said, and firefighters stopped the flames bearing down on their house.
The couple ended up in Thousand Oaks, a nearby city, staying with Kelleher’s father. Their Victorian home in Ventura had no power or drinkable water, but it was still standing.