Wildfires threaten homes in Ventura County, California.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Wildfires Threaten Southern California

Hundreds of thousands are told to evacuate their homes as officials warn of “extreme fire danger”

December 8, 2017
By Jennifer Medina and Jack Healy
Jim McMahon

Along Southern California’s canyons and coastlines, flames stormed into neighborhoods and engulfed homes where people were using sprinklers and garden hoses as a last, desperate defense against wind-driven wildfires.

Firefighters battled to hold back the flames that on Thursday threatened tens of thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area. Officials expect the wildfires to continue for several days.California Governor Jerry Brown has asked President Trump to declare a federal state of emergency for Southern California.

More than 200,000 people in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties have been told to leave their homes. The city of Ojai, nearly surrounded by fires, was evacuated on Thursday, as were parts of the coastal city of Carpinteria. Hundreds of schools were closed and roads were blocked. With well over 100,000 acres scorched, residents were on edge, watching the news footage of hills and canyons going up in smoke.

Across seven Southern California counties, millions of cellphones shook and squawked with a warning of “extreme fire danger,” in the state's largest-ever use of a disaster alert system. Other automated alerts warned people to pack up food, water, and essential documents, and to be ready to flee on a few minutes’ notice. Fire and smoke forced closures of major highways and smaller roads.

The bone-dry Santa Ana winds blowing from the northeast picked up speed, gusting to 60 miles per hour in places, made it even more difficult for firefighters to get control of the situation. Officials warned that several large fires that were still burning (and no more than 15 percent contained) and dangerous surprises could still be in store.

Wildfires and Climate Change

Scientists say the severe wildfire season that Southern California has experienced this fall will likely become more common because of climate change. Years of drought were followed by a particularly wet winter last year that caused a bumper crop of grasses and other vegetation. That wet spell was followed by another very dry and very hot summer that turned all that vegetation into tinder, experts say. 

Across the region, people wiped stinging smoke from their eyes and huddled inside. They stood in their front yards and prayed. They sifted through their charred homes, fled to evacuation shelters and said that even in this wildfire-prone state, they had never confronted late-season blazes as fast and ferocious as these.

“We’ve always been under threat of fire; we’re used to it,” said Suzanne White, who drove past curtains of flames above the 101 freeway as she fled her home in the mountain-fringed town of Ojai. “But this year, the fires are raging so fast and furiously that you can’t get ahead of them.” “It burns,” she said, “and it keeps burning.”

Some people agonized over whether to stay and defend their homes or join the thousands who had already evacuated. In Ventura, Paul Sezzi warily watched the sky and reflected on his losing battle earlier in the week to save his 77-year-old mother’s home, which his father had built by hand. After his mother fled, Sezzi, 51, returned to the home and tried to stave off destruction with a garden hose. He could see a glow behind the ridgeline above him, and as the winds kicked up, the hillsides erupted into quilts of fire. Flames skittered down the hills toward avocado orchards, neighboring streets — and him.

“It was like someone had turned on a burner from a range,” he said. “The fire, the ash, the smoke — everything right toward me. It’s coming at me, getting in my eyes.”

Galaxies of ash and embers rained down, and palm trees and pines exploded like matchsticks, Sezzi said. As the flames began to surround him,  he decided his battle to save the house was lost, and he had to go.

 “Everything is just gone,” he said on Thursday from his own home in Ventura — safe for now — where he was warily looking out the window and watching the winds. “It’s really scary. You just don’t know. We never think that the fire could reach us, but everybody’s a little bit on edge. Because where do we evacuate to?”

Jennifer Medina and Jack Healy are reporters for The New York Times.

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