A Southern California fire has caused havoc at explosive speed after being pushed by incredibly powerful Santa Ana winds, to the point 26,000 acres have been covered by flames as of the 4th December, with thousands of citizens being forced to evacuate in darkness.
In addition, one person has died in a rollover car crash while trying to flee from the flames, as announced by Mark Lorenzen – the Ventura Country Fire chief in a press briefing late on the 4th.
Currently, there are close to 7786 homes in Ventura and Santa Paula which are under mandatory evacuation, with fire officials warning that the powerful winds could even turn the flames to the city of Ventura. What’s causing concern is that the fire is rapidly spreading, but doing so with 0% containment.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office commented on the fire, and were concerned about the nature of the blaze and the trouble crews are having at present.
“The fire is still out of control and structures are threatened throughout the fire area,” they said. “Due to the intensity of the fire, crews are having trouble making access, but there are multiple reports of structures on fire.”
Lorenzens also said that at least two structures have been completely lost.
Ventura County Sheriff deputies were going round driving in neighbourhoods and knocking on doors, alerting residents of what was going on and warning them to evacuate.
Susan Cox, a spokeswoman for Southern California Edison also said that the fire has burned down power lines, which has subsequently caused widespread outages in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, affecting over 260,000 people.
The brush fire, which is being called the Thomas Fire, was initially reported at Steckel Park – just north of Santa Paula – at around 6:30pm, according to the initial reports given to the Ventura County Fire Department.
While officials had earlier warned of extreme fire danger as a result of the Santa Ana winds, the fire ignited and travelled as fast as 40 to 60mph.Fire in California rages out of control and forces thousands to evacuate
