A look at the California wildfires' jaw-dropping numbers
Thousands flee as winds whip California fires 02:09
(CNN)Barely
two months after the wine country fires charred Northern California,
the state is once again staring down a spate of wildfires, this time in Southern California.
These fires are fueled by some of the strongest Santa Ana winds in
recent memory. Here are some eye-popping numbers from these newest
fires:
Growing huge ...
The
Thomas fire, the largest of the blazes, is burning through Ventura
County and is now more than six times the size of Manhattan and showing
few signs of slowing.
... really fast
The
Thomas fire is moving fast. It had grown about 31,000 acres in about 9
hours -- that's nearly an acre per second the fire was spreading. That
rate would burn through Manhattan's Central Park in about 14 minutes. As
of late Wednesday, the Thomas fire had grown to 90,000 acres.
Whipping winds
The
last time the Santa Ana winds were this bad -- multiple days of warning
level winds and red flags -- was 10 years ago, in October 2007.
Current wind gusts in Los Angeles and Ventura counties are running from 40 to 60 mph, but isolated gusts in the mountains may hit 80 mph into Thursday. So the risk of the fires spreading will remain high.
Getting out
More than 50,000 Ventura County residents were evacuated from 15,000 homes in the first 24 hours of the conflagration.
In the dark
About
11,000 homes are without power -- a sliver of Southern California
Edison's 15 million customers, but those numbers could rise because
flames were burning along power transmission paths. The number earlier
was 43,000 homes.
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