Ventura County Mountain Fire explodes to 14,000 acres as dangerous high winds batter California
Several people have been injured and multiple homes burned after the Mountain Fire broke out Wednesday morning in Southern California's Ventura County, authorities said.
It started at around 8:50 a.m. near the 7900 block of Balcom Canyon Road and Bradley Road on South Mountain in the Moorpark area, according to the Ventura County Fire Department. Within an hour, the fire had grown from 25 to 1,000 acres.
The Mountain Fire raged through the night, burning more than 14,100 acres as it remained at 0% containment. The Federal Emergency Agency has released funds to help pay for firefighting resources.
As the wildfire tore through neighborhoods, firefighters were focused on life-saving efforts, said firefighter Andrew Dowd.
"Our No. 1 priority here at Ventura County Fire, in running this incident, is life safety," Dowd said. "And we're urging all residents that are in the affected areas to make sure that they're heeding evacuation orders. That's our No. 1 priority."
Firefighters said several people sustained injuries requiring hospitalizations. None of the victims' conditions were immediately known.
At about 11 a.m., VCFD crews reported that the flames had jumped SR-118 and were moving into the Camarillo area, encroaching upon the Camarillo Heights area.
Aerial footage showed four different homes burning in a neighborhood near Cabrillo Way and Highland Drive in Camarillo Wednesday afternoon, hours after the fire started.
San Bernardino County Fire Department crews reported that a strike team was deployed to the area to assist VCFD with the incident.
Evacuation orders
The Ventura County Sheriff's Office issued evacuation warnings and orders for many residents in Camarillo, Somis and residents near the Santa Clara River.
A real-time map of evacuation orders can be found here.
Authorities established an evacuation center at Padre Serra Parish, located at 5205 Upland Road in Camarillo.
Homeowners with large pets were advised to drop their animals off at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, located at 10 E. Harbor Boulevard. Small pets can be brought to the Ventura County Animal Services center at the Camarillo Airport, located at 600 Aviation Drive.
Hard road closures were put into place at SR-118 at Tierra Rejada and Wells Road, as well as Balcom Canyon Road at Stockton and Las Posas at Lewis, VCFD said. At noon, they also closed N. Lewis Road.
Drivers traveling on SR-118 and SR-23 were advised to stay vigilant and look out for emergency vehicles heading to the fire.
"The biggest challenge we have ... is we have horses coming down the roads," said an Oxnard Fire Department Captain. "We have had a lot of people that did not evacuate early ... we had lots of traffic in our way."
School closures
The Mountain Fire has caused more than a dozen schools and districts to close as crews try to extinguish the flames. Pleasant Valley School District officials evacuated the Camarillo Heights Elementary School campus "due to the wind event and related fires in surrounding communities." A bus took students who were not picked up to Monte Vista Middle School.
More than a dozen more schools and districts announced closures for the rest of the week.
Powerful winds fueling flames
The fire comes in the midst of severe winds battering much of Southern California, which prompted National Weather Service officials to issue Red Flag Warnings. In this particular instance, they issued a "Particularly Dangerous Situation" alert because of the threat posed by "an ongoing or imminent fire weather pattern."
Meteorologists tracked some gusts of wind that reached more than 60 miles per hour as the fire burned.
The strong winds grounded firefighting fixed-wing aircraft, adding another hurdle toward full containment, according to VCFD.
"The fire is burning in what we call an intermix area, which is a mixture of wildland and lots of agriculture," said VCFD Captain Anthony McHale while speaking with KCAL. "There are a number of residences and ranches and smaller neighborhoods that are in the intermix area and that presents enormous challenges to the boots on the ground."
He said that wind-driven fires are one of the most dangerous situations that firefighters face because of the constantly evolving flames, smoke and ember fallout.
"That can present challenges, and of course, in some cases depending on the dynamics of the winds, those embers can be carried long distances, starting spot fires in receptive fuel beds and structures that might be in the area," McHale said.
The combination of topography, wind conditions and dry brush contributed to the rapid rate of spread, according to Dr. John Fisher from Chapman University.
"That fire will spread faster up just because fire moves upwards," said Fisher, who is a climate scientist. "So, we've got these conditions of the topography, the wind and the plants — and also close to roads and human property — all just kind of coming together to make this a lot worse than it could've been if the winds were calm, the vegetation was wet."
While the cause remains under investigation. Fisher speculates that it may be human-caused.
"It doesn't even really have to be purposeful. It could be throwing a cigarette butt. It could be a piece of metal on a car that sparks something," Fisher said.
He also spoke on why Southern California has been so heavily impacted by wildfires this season.
"We're seeing a lot more wildfires for a lot of reasons," Fisher said. "The general climate change angle of things getting hotter and drier, but also, remember now, we just came off a really wet winter also related to climate change. So, this wet winter ended up growing up a lot of plants and a lot of vegetation that ended up drying out over the summer."
On top of the increased amount of fuel, he says that humans play a large part.
"We've got also increasing people moving into these areas — more roads, more opportunities for sparks, and then as these fires grow, more threats to human life and property," Fisher said.
At the same time, a different brush fire was burning in Malibu, which had already destroyed at one home and damaged another as it torched 50 acres of brush.
Residents react
With the dynamic situation, quickly decimating hundreds of acres of vegetation in just hours, residents were forced to jump into action to evacuate their homes.
"We've never seen anything like this before. Never thought anything like this would happen to us," said Ken Levin, who lives in a home adjacent to the Spanish Hills area. "But fire department is out there, they're bulldozing fire breaks on the back of our property and the wind is going south. So, we feel good about where we are. ... I think we're gonna be okay. Thank God for our firefighters that are here to help us when we need it."
Levin, whose wife had already evacuated by the time he spoke with KCAL News' Jeff Nguyen, was on his way out when he saw the flames start to rip over the hillside.
"Oh my God, my house is in danger," he said, motioning towards his home "I'm alive. My wife is alive. We have everything we need, this can be replaced."
He said that in all the years that he's lived in the area he's "never experienced wind like this."
At around 1 p.m., California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X to note that state officials were en route to the fire because of the "severe threat" being posed to Camarillo Heights. He also noted that Cal Fire officials and California Office of Emergency Services officials were corresponding to provide necessary support to residents.
Jarring video from the scene showed the moments that Ventura County Sheriff's Department deputies rushed into what looked to be an elderly living facility, ushering several wheelchair-bound residents to safety with massive clouds of smoke in the surrounding area.
Power outages in place
Because of the Santa Ana wind event that was slated to last throughout the day, SoCal Edison began to cut power service to some customers due to the heightened fire risk.
As of 1 p.m., more than 23,300 SCE customers living in Ventura County were affected by the Public Safety Power Shutoffs, a situation that will continue to develop as the fire burns.
"They will be active during the wind event and once we see those wind conditions improve, we will start to work to reenergize customers," said Gabriela Ornelas, a public information officer for SCE.
With forecasts predicting that the winds will continue through the evening and into Thursday, Ornelas said power could return sporadically for customers.
"It is possible that customers could get power back if there are lulls in the wind in certain areas or communities," she said. "That would be a brief instance in this wind event."
Ornelas said that while outages are a known inconvenience, they're conducted with the public's safety in mind.
"Public safety shutoffs are a last resort that we implement to keep the public safe," she said.
Power outages also affected Monte Vista and Las Posas Schools while Santa Rosa Technology Magnet School was on a watch list for a different outage.
Chaparral Middle School and Campus Canyon College Prep Academy closed after the fire caused power outages. No students were at risk.