‘WE DROVE THROUGH A WALL OF FLAMES’
Severe wind gusts put thousands more homes in jeopardy of burning
Californians describe scenes of panic as wildfires spread, threatening scenic mountain town and forcing thousands to flee homes,
OJAI, CALIF.— The biggest and most destructive of the windblown fires raking Southern California shut down one of the region’s busiest freeways Thursday and threatened Ojai, a scenic mountain town dubbed “Shangri-La” and known for its boutique hotels and New Age spiritual retreats.
Most of Ojai’s 7,000 residents were warned to clear out late Wednesday and patients unable to walk were moved from the Ojai Valley Community Hospital because of unprecedented, hurricane-force Santa Ana winds in the overnight forecast.
The winds turned out to be less fierce than expected, but firefighters still had to contend with gusts that fanned the fire to 388 square kilometres and put thousands of homes in jeopardy.
Two people were burned in the blaze that destroyed five buildings and threatened 1,000 others around Bonsall, a small picturesque hilly community known for its equestrian facilities.
Along the coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara, tiny beach communities were under siege as fire leapt from steep hillsides across U.S. Hwy. 101. “We drove through a wall of flames,” Wendy Frank said, describing her ordeal after evacuating her horses from Ojai on Wednesday night. “I didn’t know if we’d make it. I just put the accelerator down. I know we were going over 100 mph (160 km/h), we could have been going much more, and just hoped for the best.”
The largest of the wildfires — the Thomas Fire — surrounded Ojai on Thursday morning, officials said, endangering the popular winter retreat that is normally home to about 8,000 people. Most of the Ojai Valley was under a mandatory evacuation order.
The Thomas Fire “continues to burn actively with extreme rates of spread,” officials said Thursday morning.
The blaze prompted officials to shut down the 101 Freeway north of Ventura, leaving no way to travel between Ventura and Santa Barbara, the sheriff’s office said. Officials said they had evacuated more than 50,000 people from 15,000 homes, and some 2,500 personnel were responding to the fire.
Down along the coast, fires flared along U.S. Hwy. 101, forcing an evacuation of the tiny community of Faria Beach.
“Anyone in your homes still, you need to leave now,” a California Highway Patrol officer said through a loudspeaker while driving down a smoke-shrouded street. “The fire is here, you need to leave.”
“We drove through a wall of flames. I didn’t know if we’d make it.” WENDY FRANK HOMEOWNER
Joseph Ruffner, who left earlier in the week, said he was staying put.
“This morning there was a wall of fire back right over here,” he said. “I didn’t think it was no big deal, but it’s coming back to burn what it didn’t burn yesterday.”
The highway, which runs the length of the state and is a major commuter corridor to Los Angeles, was closed intermittently along the 45-kilometre stretch between Ventura and Santa Barbara.
The Ventura County blaze and three other major fires burning in the Los Angeles area have put tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders and destroyed nearly 200 homes and buildings, a figure almost certain to rise. A woman was found dead in a wrecked car in an evacuation zone near the city of Santa Paula, where the Ventura County blaze began Monday night, but officials could not immediately say whether the accident was fire-related.
At least 20 homes have burned in a retirement community as a wildfire surges through northern San Diego County.
The homes are burning in the tightly packed Rancho Monserate Country Club community in the small city of Fallbrook.
The wind-whipped blaze erupted Thursday afternoon and authorities say it’s moving dangerously fast.
The blaze is one of at least five destructive fires burning in Southern California. A fire that flared Thursday afternoon in the Murrieta area of Riverside County, north of San Diego County, has destroyed at least one home.
In Ojai, the normally bustling town was practically vacant as smoke hung along the surrounding hillsides. Known as “Shangri-La,” both for its role as the stand-in for a Himalayan utopia in the 1937 Frank Capra movie Lost Horizon.
In tiny Faria Beach, homeowner Steve Andruszkewicz and his wife used a garden hose to spray palm trees to keep them from burning.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “We’ve been packed up since Tuesday. We left Tuesday night and stayed down at our son’s house. We came back yesterday, stayed the night, but this has got me worrying because of the blowing embers.”
On Wednesday, residents from Mexican border to the central California coast received emergency alerts on their cellphones, warning them of “strong winds overnight creating extreme fire danger.”
The alert went to most smartphones in an area that is home to more than 22 million people — by far California’s largest use of a disaster warning system created by Congress and activated in 2012.
The same alert system was not used in October, when fires swept through Napa and Sonoma counties near San Francisco, destroying thousands of homes and killing dozens of people. Many survivors of those fires complained that they had little or no warning of the disaster. With files from Bloomberg