Calming winds helped firefighters gain the upper hand on Saturday against the Mountain fire in Southern California, after three days of pitched battle using dozens of aircraft, hundreds of fire trucks and legions of firefighters on foot wielding saws and shovels.
High winds and thick vegetation fueled the Mountain fire, which started on Wednesday near the city of Oxnard in Ventura County and exploded to more than 20,000 acres in less than 24 hours. But the winds died down on Friday, aiding fire crews in their fight against the blaze.
Officials said Saturday that the fire was 17 percent contained and that it had not jumped its perimeter. The nearly 3,000 personnel working to tame the blaze planned to “mop up” hot spots and move through burned neighborhoods to assess the damage, officials said.
The Ventura County fire chief, Dustin Gardner, said at a briefing Friday evening that he was grateful for the emergency workers who responded on the day the fire broke out. They “brought this calm to where we’re at today,” he said.
Earlier in the week, fierce winds that gusted up to 80 miles per hour hurled flaming embers far beyond the fire line, sparking new fires, setting houses ablaze and grounding some firefighting aircraft. Roughly 10,000 people were forced to evacuate in what quickly became one of the most destructive wildfires in Southern California in recent years. As of Friday night, about 2,000 were still waiting to go home.
Roughly 130 structures have been reported destroyed, a number that officials warned could still climb. There were no known fatalities, and no reports of missing people, Sheriff James Fryhoff of Ventura County, said in the Friday briefing.
The absence of deaths is due in large part to intensive planning and preparation by local authorities, said Dave Gomberg, a fire weather program leader at the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.
“We saw this extreme wind event coming days in advance and let local fire authorities know it was a particularly dangerous situation,” he said. “That allows them to be ready and preposition resources. And that kind of preparation saves lives.”
Heeding warnings about damaging winds and dry conditions, California electricity providers also shut off power lines in some high-risk areas of the state.
Mr. Gomberg said calm winds and rising humidity over the weekend should make for favorable conditions through at least Tuesday, when another bout of winds, albeit less extreme, is expected.
“That has the fire teams a little nervous,” he said.
As smoke continued to drift over the dry hills on Saturday, some residents went back to their burned neighborhoods to assess the damage. A few found only blackened piles of debris.
Sayeed Sikder, 50, was resting at an evacuation center in the town of Camarillo on Saturday morning. On Wednesday, he had left his house on a hillside to buy a loaf of bread and returned to a police roadblock and black smoke billowing from his neighborhood. He watched the flames burn and the skies darken with smoke from a nearby parking lot and prayed. But later that evening, a police officer told him his house was destroyed.
On Thursday, Mr. Sikder returned to his house from the evacuation center and found it and several others leveled. He sifted through the charred wreckage with a shovel, first hoping to find a few keepsakes, including a wooden box containing the jewelry of his recently deceased mother, then hoping to find anything recognizable at all.
“Nothing was in there. All turned into ashes, everything,” Mr. Sikder said on Saturday. “I am completely traumatized. I don’t know where to even start.”
Just down the road from Mr. Sikder’s home, Joey Parish, 72, stood in the rubble of the house where his family had lived for 25 years, gazing at the only thing spared by the fire: the sweeping view of the valley below.
Gone were family photos, musical instruments — including pianos and guitars — and all of the furniture. Stacks of heavy boxes in the family garage holding 3,000 copies of a book by Mr. Parish’s wife, Fawn Parish, had been reduced to a feathery white ash that was drifting away on the breeze.
Also lost, at least for now, were the intangible neighborhood ties. Every year, the Parishes host international students from a nearby university for Thanksgiving.
Soon, too, it would be time for the couple’s annual Christmas dessert exchange party with neighbors. Then there was Ms. Parish’s regular writers’ group and the couple’s “Night of Stories” gatherings, where anyone could come and tell a good tale.
Mr. Parish said he planned to rebuild the house. But on Saturday, he said he and his wife were still in shock. The extent of the loss had not fully set in.
“She has not got in touch with her emotions,” he said. “I haven’t really either. There’s too much to absorb.”
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