Raging wildfires the ‘new normal,’ governor says
FALLBROOK, Calif. — A week of destructive fires in Southern California is ending, but danger still looms.
Well into what’s considered the wet season, there’s been nary a drop of rain. That’s good for sun-seeking tourists but could spell more disaster for a region that emerged this spring from a yearslong drought and now has firefighters on edge because of parched conditions and no end in sight to the typical fire season.
“This is the new normal,” Gov. Jerry Brown warned Saturday after surveying damage from the deadly Ventura County fire that has caused the most destruction and continued burning out of control. “We’re about ready to have firefighting at Christmas. This is very odd and unusual.”
Even as firefighters made progress containing six major wildfires from Santa Barbara to San Diego County, and as most evacuees were allowed to return home, predicted gusts of up to 50 mph through Sunday posed a threat of flaring up existing blazes or spreading new ones. High fire risk is expected to last into January.
Overall, the fires have destroyed nearly 800 homes and other buildings, killed dozens of horses and forced more than 200,000 people to flee flames that have burned more than 270 square miles since Monday. One death, so far, a 70-year-old woman who crashed her car on an evacuation route, is attributed to the fire in Santa Paula, a small city next to Ventura, where the fire began.
On Tuesday, officials brought in more helicopters from the National Guard and “every last plane we could find in the nation,” said Thom Porter, southern chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The military provided C-130 planes for firefighting, said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services. More than 290 fire engines came from Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon and Nevada.
But when flames met ferocious winds, crews were largely powerless to stop them. Even fire-attacking aircraft were helpless while being grounded at times because of night, high winds or smoke.
As fires burned in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, firefighters from other states were already in place north of San Diego on Thursday when a major fire erupted and rapidly spread in the Fallbrook area, known for its avocado groves and horse stables in the rolling hills.
The fire swept through the San Luis Rey Training Facility, where it killed more than 40 elite thoroughbreds and destroyed more than 100 homes — most of them in the Rancho Monserate Country Club retirement community. Three people were burned trying to escape the fire that continued to smolder Saturday.
Most of this week’s fires were in places that burned in the past, including one in the ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel-Air that burned six homes and another in the city’s rugged foothills above the community of Sylmar and in Santa Paula.