Firefighters north of Los Angeles made progress Thursday against a brush fire that exploded the day before, quickly burning more than 10,000 acres and becoming the third-largest fire to menace Southern California this month. The blaze forced officials to issue more than 50,000 evacuation orders and warnings, and to close parts of Interstate 5.
By Thursday afternoon, most of the highway had reopened, many evacuees were able to return home and the blaze near Castaic Lake, a reservoir about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, was 14 percent contained. The fire continued to burn away from homes in suburbs outside of Santa Clarita, and through woody hillsides at a state park.
Still, red flag warnings, which indicate dangerous fire weather conditions, remained in effect for much of Southern California. The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles warned that wind gusts of up to 65 miles per hour could ignite new fires or spread existing ones.
A brush fire broke out Thursday morning on a mountain in Ventura County, near Camarillo, Calif., prompting evacuations of the nearby Cal State, Channel Islands, university campus, which has 4,880 students, officials said. The blaze, named the Laguna fire, was spreading rapidly.
Firefighters had managed to stop the advancement of another small blaze, called the Sepulveda fire, that broke out late Wednesday near the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, allowing people who had briefly been under evacuation orders to return.
The progress against the large blaze near Santa Clarita, named the Hughes fire, allowed officials to lift mandatory evacuation orders for about half of the residents who had been told to flee. Roughly 16,200 remain under mandatory orders, down from 31,000 on Wednesday night.
Many of those who are no longer under mandatory orders, as well as many others nearby, are still covered by evacuation warnings, however, meaning that they should be ready to leave if conditions change. In all, some 38,700 people are in that category.
The blaze had grown to nearly the size of the 14,000-acre Eaton fire, which began on Jan. 7 — the same day as the larger Palisades fire — and destroyed more than 9,000 structures. The Eaton fire was 95 percent contained on Thursday; the Palisades fire had burned more than 23,000 acres and was 70 percent contained.
Many Californians know the area near Castaic Lake as the home of the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. On Wednesday night, people in a Castaic subdivision watched flames smolder in the hills across Interstate 5. A few helicopters crisscrossed the sky as wind chimes rang and palm fronds rustled over the low hum of traffic.
Flames also appeared in the hills above the Pitchess Detention Center, a jail in the mandatory evacuation zone. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it was moving some of the facility’s inmates and declared itself “poised and ready” to keep them safe.
The fire burned mostly brush, and there were no reports of damaged structures by Thursday afternoon. But after weeks of enduring some of the most destructive blazes in California history, the new menace was the last thing that residents wanted to deal with.
Warm and dry conditions enveloped Southern California on Thursday, with another round of Santa Ana desert winds that peaked around noon Pacific time. The area was under a red flag warning until Friday morning. Cooler conditions were forecast for Friday and through the weekend, with intermittent showers expected to start on Monday morning.
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