CASTAIC: A new wildfire that broke out north of Los Angeles on Wednesday rapidly spread to more than 9,400 acres (38 square km), fueled by strong winds and dry brush, forcing mandatory evacuation orders for more than 31,000 people.
The Hughes fire, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Los Angeles, sent huge flames and plumes of smoke over a hilly area and further taxed firefighters who have managed to bring two major fires in the met-ropolitan area largely under control.
In just a few hours on Wednesday, the new fire grew to two-thirds the size of the Eaton Fire, one of the two monster conflagrations that have ravaged the Los Angeles area. The affected area was not as populated as those blazes, said a spokesperson for the firefighters, Mat-thew Van Hagen.
“It’s more sparsely populated. However, out here, we are dealing with high winds, which we also saw with the other fires, along with […] a very receptive fuel bed and steep topography again,” he said as firefighters battled the fire into the night.
Officials warned people in the Castaic Lake area of Los Angeles County that they faced “immediate threat to life”, while much of Southern California remained under a red-flag warning for extreme fire risk due to strong, dry winds.
Some 31,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders and another 23,000 face evacuation warnings, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna told a press conference.
The Angeles National Forest said its entire 700,000-acre (2,800-sq-km) park in the San Gabriel Moun-tains was closed to visitors.
Southern California has gone without significant rain for nine months, contributing to hazardous condi-tions, but some rain was forecast from Saturday through Monday, possibly giving firefighters much-needed relief.
Helicopters scooped water out of a lake to drop on the fire while fixed-wing aircraft dropped fire re-tardant on the hills, video on KTLA television showed. Flames spread to the water’s edge.
Interstate 5, the major north-south highway in the western United States, was temporarily closed in the mountain pass areas known as the Grapevine due to poor visibility from the smoke, the California Highway Patrol said.
But firefighters were able to suppress enough of the fire to reopen the highway, Marrone said. –Agencies
