As crews continued to battle several blazes up and down the state, the most recent, named the Maria fire, flared up in Ventura County on Thursday evening and grew to cover nearly 9,000 acres as of noon Friday. A shift in the wind late in the morning began driving the fire, which was fully uncontained, toward Santa Paula, a city of about 30,000 people.
The flames may have already been blown across the Santa Clara River and reached at least one building in the city, fire officials said. The Maria fire was just the latest blaze to swell amid dry brush, which acts as fuel, and strong Santa Ana winds that pushed several other fires through rural and suburban areas in recent weeks.
The fire was threatening 2,300 buildings by noon Friday, and residents of a mobile home park in Santa Paula were ordered to evacuate, Sheriff Bill Ayub of Ventura County said. He added that 769 people incarcerated at a local jail were just outside of the evacuation zone and were staying in place for the time being.
In addition to homes and businesses threatened by fire, avocado and citrus orchards are also at risk of being charred, officials said.
At least 500 firefighters were working to keep the flames at bay. Earlier Friday, fire officials had tried to assure residents that the fire would not spread as widely as deadly blazes that have destroyed California towns in recent years.
“It’s eventually going to run out of fuel,” John McNeil, an assistant fire chief, said Friday morning. He said the Maria fire was expected to reach 12,000 acres at the most.
It is too early for authorities to say what caused the Maria fire, but McNeil said the fire had started near “communications infrastructure” on South Mountain, a ridge that runs east-west about 15 miles northeast of Oxnard, California.
The Maria fire began only 12 miles away from the Easy fire. That fire had burned about 18,000 acres by Friday morning and was 80% contained. The state’s largest active fire, the Kincade fire in Northern California, remained at about 77,700 acres and was 68% contained.
This article originally appeared in
.