Like the Kincade Fire, a blaze raging through the forests and vineyards of Northern California, the Tick Fire in Santa Clarita was driven by strong autumn winds.
Authorities ordered all public schools in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys to be closed Friday, and the closing of a major freeway snarled rush-hour traffic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Sonoma counties because of the fires.
At a news briefing Friday morning, authorities said the Tick Fire had burned 4,300 acres and was 5% contained. They said they had determined that six structures had burned so far.
“However, we know that it’s going to rise today,” said Chief Daryl L. Osby of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Osby said that there were actually no active fires at the moment, but that the ground was smoldering and the winds were whipping — they were dealing with “significant and erratic winds.” The worry is that new fires could ignite at any moment.
“At any moment an ember could get out of our containment line,” he said.
Still, he said authorities would consider allowing residents to return to certain areas by Friday afternoon. Aircraft have been used to fight the Tick Fire, and 600 firefighters have been deployed, he said.
Osby said he was pleased to see so many residents heed the evacuation orders, saying many did so because of memories of last season’s deadly fires. But he said he was concerned that some chose to ignore the orders and were staying in their homes within the evacuation zones.
Dangerous winds were forecast to continue Friday in the Los Angeles area, challenging the hundreds of firefighters deployed to contain the Tick Fire, the National Weather Service said.
Winds in the mountains will have gusts between 50 mph to 60 mph, and relative humidity will remain in the single digits, said Curt Kaplan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service who covers the Los Angeles area.
“That’s going to cause extreme fire behavior with rapid rate of spread,” Kaplan said.
Although the winds were expected to subside Friday evening, they were forecast to return Sunday.
“The combination of very dry conditions with strong winds and dry fuels — it’s just not a good combination,” Kaplan said.
The threatening weather conditions arriving over the weekend prompted the state’s largest electrical utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, to warn of another large-scale power outage that will affect areas north and east of San Francisco.
Peak fire season is far from over in California, although the wildfires this year have been less catastrophic as those of the past two years. Fewer than 300 structures have burned in wildfires so far this year compared with more than 23,000 last year. And around 163,000 acres have burned this year, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency, compared with 1.6 million acres in 2018.
16,000 acres of Sonoma County were engulfed by the Kincade Fire.
The Kincade Fire had destroyed 49 structures and burned 16,000 acres in Sonoma County as of Thursday night, according to Cal Fire. About 1,300 firefighters were battling the blaze, which was about 5% contained.
Newsom was set to travel to Sonoma County on Friday to visit communities affected by the Kincade Fire.
Evacuation orders covered 2,000 people, according to authorities in Sonoma County. Wind gusts blew the fire through forests, leaving firefighters with little opportunity to stop or slow down the walls of flames after the fire began Wednesday night. Sonoma County was ravaged in 2017, when the Sonoma Complex fires killed 24 and burned more than 170 square miles.
The power was on at an IHOP in Napa, and it became a refuge for some who lacked it at home. Barbara Tonsberg, 93, a former church organist and high school math teacher, was eating pancakes because there was not much to do with the electricity cut off at her home in nearby Angwin.
“Drying your hair doesn’t work too well without power,” Tonsberg said. “I’m tired of cold food, but there’s nothing you can do but deal with it.”
As she spoke, her son, Wayne, got a call on his cellphone. It was an automated message from PG&E.; He was advised that the company could not predict when their power would return — and that it might go out again Saturday.
A utility is investigating whether an equipment malfunction contributed to the Kincade Fire.
Pacific Gas & Electric said it was investigating whether its equipment had been involved in stoking the Kincade Fire. PG&E; said it had become aware that a “transmission-level outage” occurred in the area around the time the fire began.
By early Friday, electricity had been restored to most of the utility’s 179,000 customers who were without power Thursday. Most of the remaining customers without power were in Kern County, where high winds continued to blow.
But the utility issued a fresh warning early Friday that meteorologists expected another round of high winds to affect Northern California, beginning Saturday. The company said the weather conditions and the time needed to restore any damaged equipment could leave a far larger number of customers without power for more than 48 hours. PG&E; said it was trying to contact customers who might be affected by telephone, text and email.
Bill Johnson, PG&E; Corp.’s chief executive officer, said this weekend’s weather could bring the strongest winds of the wildfire season so far.
Separately, Southern California Edison had reduced the number of customers it had blacked out to just over 21,000 but kept almost 400,000 customers under warning for possible power shut-off.
Smoke expected to cause delays at the San Francisco airport.
As smoke swept across the Bay Area on Friday, San Francisco International Airport prepared for flight delays.
“Reduced visibility could lead the FAA to implement a delay program,” said Doug Yakel, a spokesman for the airport.
Delays were not expected at the Oakland International Airport or the San Jose International Airport, according to representatives there.
Though air quality across the Bay Area fell into the moderate category Friday morning, it was expected to get worse as northwest winds pushed smoke across the region, according to Ralph Borrmann, a spokesman for Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which posts updates on its hourly tracker.
‘Not taking any chances’
Around midnight, police officers drove through Frank Cruz’s neighborhood near Santa Clarita, blaring sirens and announcing that all residents must leave, as high winds were fanning a quickly moving brush fire.
By Friday morning, Cruz, and his wife, Cindy, who is seven months pregnant, were waking up in their car, in the parking lot of a Denny’s. Cindy Cruz, who has lived in the area for more than a decade and had never been forced to evacuate for a fire, said she thought there were so many evacuations because of an abundance of caution.
After last year’s deadly fire season in California, she said, people “aren’t taking any chances.”
With the Paradise Fire in Northern California claiming more than 80 lives last year, and the Woolsey Fire tearing a destructive path through Malibu and its environs, this year everyone — power companies, fire and law enforcement agencies, residents — is extra cautious. Authorities seem to be quicker to order evacuations at the first sign of fire.
And residents, who in past years may have shrugged off evacuation orders, preferring to remain home and, if necessary, protect their houses, are heeding orders. They are readying their cars, packing them with valuables, just in case they get the order.
“I think people are listening more,” said Mary Lindsey, 64, who Friday morning was eating breakfast at a Red Cross center in a gymnasium at the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita. “In the past there’d be evacuation orders and people would blow them off. After last year, they aren’t doing that.”
Lindsey’s husband, Charles, said the fire started in a canyon near their home and quickly burned through dry shrub land that had grown during the heavy rains earlier this year.
“With the winds blowing, it moved fast,” said Charles Lindsey, 68, his dog Ivy at his feet. “In the middle of the night, if you’re told to go, you go.”
Only one shelter was opened Thursday, and only about 400 people showed up there, according to Roxanne Schorbach, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross. (A second shelter, at a local high school, opened Friday.) The evacuees slept Thursday night on cots in the college gymnasium, many with their pets, and Friday morning were eating pancakes and bagels and awaiting news.
The new normal?
The Kincade and Tick fires in California are the latest in the state to force evacuations and threaten homes. Earlier this month the Saddleridge and Saddlewood fires swept across Southern California prompting the question: Is this the new normal?
The total area burned in a single year by wildfires in the United States has exceeded 13,900 square miles — an area larger than the country of Belgium — only four times since the middle of last century. All four times have happened this decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. As a result, government agencies are preparing themselves to deal with fires that are increasingly seen as inevitable.
Some times, it means setting fires on purpose — a practice known as prescribed burns — or trying to understand how wildfire smoke behaves to be better prepared to warn residents of the risks.
This article originally appeared in
.