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Officials battling the massive Thomas fire said the next 24 hours will be crucial as powerful winds return, …
Winds put hundreds of homes in Montecito area in danger as Thomas fire rages
Highway 126 in Santa Paula (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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Officials
battling the massive Thomas fire said the next 24 hours will be crucial
as powerful winds return, threatening hundreds of homes in Montecito
and other areas of the Santa Barbara coast.
With
red flag conditions expected between 2 a.m. and 10 p.m. Saturday,
buoyed by 30- to 40-mph gusts that will blow directly south toward the
ocean, there is nothing to stop a finger of the Thomas fire on the
western edge from running south through a canyon along San Ysidro Creek
and into foothill homes, said Mark Brown, a fire operations commander.
Firefighters
have smothered the hills in hundreds of thousands of gallons of fire
retardant in an attempt to keep embers from igniting spot fires and to
keep flames at bay, Brown said.
Some
hillsides have been burned deliberately above Montecito, Summerland and
Carpinteria, including in Romero and Toro canyons, to limit the
potential damage. The fire is out in much of those areas and protected
by containment lines, he said.
A
drive up Toro Canyon Road in Carpinteria reveals how methodically
firefighters are working to protect homes on this side of the mountains
ahead of winds that could bring the Thomas fire this way in the next 48
hours.
The
roads are sprinkled with shards of tree branch and flakes of dead
grass. The bushes and trees on the south-facing hill on Viola Lane got a
buzz to within inches of the soil.
Deeper
in the canyon, the dirt is a charred black and gray, bare of any of the
flashy fuels that flames would sweep through in seconds. Off the
shoulder, a chopped branch continued to burn with a tiny flame.
Friday
was the 12th consecutive day of red flag fire warnings Friday — the
longest sustained period of fire weather warnings on record.
"We
put out plenty of red flag warnings, but we haven't seen them out 12
days in a row. That's unusual," said National Weather Service
meteorologist Curt Kaplan. "This has been the longest duration event
that we have had a red flag warning out without any breaks."
The winds died down a bit Friday morning. And officials are hoping calmer winds tonight could ease the danger even more.
Red
flag warnings were instituted by the weather service in 2004 and are
intended to alert fire agencies to hot, dry and windy conditions that
foster wildfires.
Winds blowing through Southern California continue to be temperamental, posing challenges for firefighters battling the Thomas fire, which claimed the life of apparatus engineer Cory Iverson, 32, on Thursday.
Eleven
days after the fire began near Thomas Aquinas College, the wildfire has
scorched 252,500 acres and is now the fourth-largest since the state
began keeping formal records in 1932.
The
fire, which straddles the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties,
is so large that its eastern and western fronts are influenced by
entirely different wind patterns and terrain. In many ways, it's as if
firefighters are battling two separate fires some 40 miles apart.
The fire grew roughly 3,000 acres overnight, fire officials said Friday.
Roughly
two-thirds of that growth was north of Ojai in the Rose Valley east of
Highway 33, where flames are feeding on chaparral and dead vegetation,
said Jude Olivas, a spokesman for the Thomas fire from the Newport Beach
Fire Department.
The
rest of the fire's spread was either north, deeper into Los Padres
National Forest, or to the west — where it is crawling along canyons
near the wealthy enclaves in Summerland, Montecito and Santa Barbara.
Winds
are going to shift back to a Santa Ana direction by Saturday night into
Sunday, and they are expected to get fairly strong by Sunday morning,
Kaplan said.
Los
Angeles County and Ventura County mountains could see sustained winds
from 20 to 40 mph on Sunday, with gusts up to 55 mph. There could be
some isolated gusts up to 60 mph, Kaplan said.
"It's looking pretty strong," Kaplan said.
Authorities
worry that wind gusts will push the fire south, toward billions of
dollars' worth of property. Because of this, crews from the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection have worked alongside
firefighters from 10 other western states to scrape containment lines
that would serve as a fire break before winds shift Friday night.
Streaks of red fire retardant dropped by aircraft or sprayed by tanker
trucks line the hillsides as well.
Firefighters
also are conducting small, controlled burns that destroy fuel for the
wildfire. Crews ignite backfires using either a flaming, fuel-filled
drip torch or a "stubby" — a pistol that launches flares 20 to 40 feet
into the brush. Water tankers and firefighters continually monitor these
fires and douse them if they grow too large, Olivas said.
Even
when forecasters say the winds will blow south, swirling gusts at lower
elevations could drive the blaze in another direction, Olivas said. The
lack of uniformity to the winds in the forest north of Santa Barbara is
what makes fighting a fire there so difficult, he said.
The
Thomas fire has destroyed more than 900 structures in Ventura and Santa
Barbara counties since it began Dec. 4 in Santa Paula. In its first
day, the fire spread southwest, toward Ventura, and northwest,
eventually hugging Ojai before pushing to the Santa Barbara coast.
For more California news, follow @brittny_mejia
UPDATES:
7:30 p.m.: This article was updated with new forecast, top.
4:55 p.m.: This article was update with more on winds.
3:20 p.m.: This article was updated with new scene from fire lines.
1:40 p.m. This article was updated with wind conditions.
10:55 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Olivas.
This article was originally published at 7:55 a.m.
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