Fire has far-reaching effects
First responders
While some Santa Clarita Valley residents remained without power due to wind concerns on Friday, county fire officials were closely watching the Saddleridge Fire, which has left one dead and burned more than 7,500 acres but remained south of SCV firefighters’ primary concern area as of Friday afternoon.
And while the fire was not directly affecting or endangering local residents on Friday, the windblown blaze has had far-reaching effects being felt in the SCV.
“It is just kind of sitting in an
area near the (Interstate) 210, (northbound lanes of Interstate) 5 and (the northbound lanes of Highway 14). If you can imagine, it’s making that little crescent shape; it has not moved from there,” said Maria Grycan, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in reference to the Saddleridge Fire.
Grycan said she wanted to emphasize that, despite some media reports, the fire had not crossed over Highway 14 as of Friday.
“There is currently no threat to Santa Clarita,” said Grycan at 9:40 a.m. “We have resources on the scene where the fire is and they’re monitoring it very closely. If it takes off, if it does something, we will attack it appropriately.”
There were two SuperScoopers, a Sky Crane, multiple helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft assisting with the fight against the wind-blown blaze, according to Grycan.
Los Angeles City Fire Department reported 25 structures were damaged as of Friday morning and no structures had been damaged or destroyed in the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s jurisdiction.
Schools
And as firefighters headed out, students were told to stay in. Early Friday morning, all five of the major SCV school districts plus College of the Canyons informed parents and students they would not be opening for the day out of concern of power outages, fire
danger and road closures.
The Saugus Union School District, as well as some other districts, had their early childhood development programs open early in the morning, but those were subsequently closed soon after.
“It’s in the best interest of keeping kids safe. The sheriff has asked us all to stay off the roads and we wanted to send our employees home,” said SUSD Superintendent Colleen Hawkins. “We closed the whole district office and all of the campuses.”
Colleen Rosales, a Val Verde resident with two students in the Castaic Union School District, said she was neither happy nor unhappy that the schools were closed.
“I actually work as a contractor for the Hart District,” said Rosales. “For me personally, it worked out fine because I can’t work today anyway because the Hart District schools are also closed.”
But despite many being forced to stay home from work due to the impacts on Santa Clarita, not everyone in the Rosales family had the day off work.
“Once we found out school was canceled we didn’t even try to go anywhere, but my husband is based in the (San Fernando) Valley,” said Rosales. “He tried to go out this morning, and he had heard about the closures and tried taking (State Route) 126. And he said he got a certain distance and he said, there’s no way. He didn’t even try to take the I-5 or the (U.S. Route) 101.”
Officials had no choice but to shut down the schools, roads and freeways, Rosales said.
“I don’t think they had much choice because I don’t even know how many substitute teachers they would’ve had to call in ... I know all their teachers aren’t local. And even if they called subs, I don’t even know if they could’ve gotten in,” said Rosales. “I totally understand why … it’s not the schools, it’s the roads.”
And even with the roads and freeways, Rosales said she understood closing them down because of the element of safety.
“They have to have the availability for the emergency vehicles to get through,” said Rosales. “I’m just really grateful there’s no local fires we have to deal with directly, so we’re just happy to be looking at clear skies. That’s the upside.”
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital
Despite power losses, road closures and fire danger, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital was keeping its lights on, according to Patrick Moody, a spokesman for the hospital.
“We have not lost power here, but if we do, we have backup generators that kick in immediately ... we’re operating as usual,” Moody said.
Henry Mayo also set up an emergency operations center, but that program is mostly monitoring events, and has not yet been asked to assist.
“If we are asked to help, of course, we will,” said Moody.
Sylmar
Former Santa Clarita Valley resident Olivia Galindo, who now lives in Sylmar, said in the early hours of Friday morning: “We went to go drive around looking at whatever everybody’s looking at when the fire was way over there right off the (210) freeway. My son said, ‘Mom, I think we’re being evacuated.’ But he wasn’t sure. If all our windows are closed, we’re not sure what’s going on. So, I came home and my son said, ‘Yeah, they flashed the light on our house.’”
“Two years ago we lived in Santa Clarita off of Golden Valley and Via Princessa, and got evacuated from there. In July 2016, I think it was that year,” she said.
This time, she said, her family was preparing to evacuate, but early Friday morning they had not yet left their home.
“I’m not leaving until I have to,” Galindo said. “So, my son has his car loaded up and I just put pictures in my car and I have my suitcase in the house and just waiting.”
Porter Ranch
Victims in Porter Ranch, where much of the fire reached its most damaging over the night, were not foreign to the SCV. Nancy Starczyk, president of Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, was forced to evacuate her home in the dead of night.
“We smelled the smoke, saw the orange glow of the sky,” said Starczyk. “So we started to pack and we went door to door in our neighborhood. We had a couple hours to pack. A lot of people didn’t get notified at all and a lot of people would have slept right through it.”
Starcyzk said that as of noon on Friday, she did not know about the status of her home.
“Every road is being blocked off,” said Starczyk. “We went to friends, and we spent the night on the floor with our dogs.”
Starczyk said that the smoke was thick at her home, and even if they could’ve stayed it would have been hard to breathe.
Outages
As residents in the Shadow Pines area of Canyon Country approached 24 hours without power, with no sense of when it will return, many already started to do what they could to make due.
A number of RVs and trailers could be seen while driving through the area, while residents worked to move food from their house refrigerators into their vehicles.
The winds remained strong, and many houses had debris collecting as Thursday’s winds knocked down many of the trash cans that had been put onto the street to be collected, carrying the debris across the street.
Shirley Duarte and David Aguilar have four