New wildfire near Los Angeles explodes to 9,400 acres, forcing evacuations

A new wildfire that broke out Wednesday north of Los Angeles quickly spread to more than 9,400 acres (38 square km), fueled by high winds and dry brush, forcing mandatory evacuation orders for more of 31,000 people.

The Hughes fire, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, sent huge flames and plumes of smoke across a hilly area and strained firefighters who managed to largely control two major blazes in the metropolitan area.

In just a few hours on Wednesday, the new fire grew to two-thirds the size of the Eaton Fire, one of two monster fires that ravaged the Los Angeles area.

The affected area was not as populated as those fires, said fire department spokesman Matthew Van Hagen.

“It’s a less populated area. However, here we face high winds, which we have also seen with other fires, as well as a very receptive fuel bed and again steep topography ” he said as firefighters battled the blaze. in the night.

Authorities warned residents in the Castaic Lake area of ​​Los Angeles County that they faced an “immediate threat to their lives” while much of Southern California remained under lockdown. a red flag for extreme risk of fire due to strong and dry winds.

Some 31,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders and another 23,000 were facing evacuation warnings, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a news conference.

The Angeles National Forest said its entire 700,000-acre (2,800 km²) park in the San Gabriel Mountains was closed to visitors.

Following the red flag warning, some 1,100 firefighters were deployed to Southern California in anticipation of fast-moving blazes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said. More than 4,000 firefighters were working the Hughes Fire, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said.

Southern California has gone without significant rain for nine months, contributing to dangerous conditions, but some rain was forecast Saturday through Monday, perhaps bringing much-needed relief to firefighters.

Helicopters collected water from a lake to drop on the fire while fixed-wing planes dropped fire retardant on the hills, video shown on KTLA television showed. The flames spread to the water’s edge.

Interstate 5, the main north-south highway in the western United States, was temporarily closed in the mountain pass areas known as Grapevine due to poor visibility due to smoke, it said. the California Highway Patrol. But firefighters were able to put out the fire enough to reopen the highway, Marrone said.

As the new fire raged, the two deadly fires that have ravaged Los Angeles since Jan. 7 were better contained, Cal Fire said.

The Eaton Fire, which burned 14,021 acres (57 km2) east of Los Angeles, was 91 percent contained, while the larger Palisades Fire, which consumed 23,448 acres (95 km2 ) on the west side of Los Angeles, was 68% contained. .

Containment measures the percentage of the perimeter of a fire that firefighters have under control.

Since the two fires broke out on Jan. 7, they have burned an area nearly as large as Washington, D.C., killed 28 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures, Cal Fire said. At one point, 180,000 people were under evacuation orders, according to Los Angeles County officials.

Private forecaster AccuWeather estimates damage and economic losses at more than $250 billion.

A series of small wildfires have been extinguished or largely contained in Southern California over the past two weeks.