'Worst in My Lifetime': Wind-Whipped Fires Char 500 Mobile Homes
In Calif., thousands, including celebs, flee homes. Dozens more homes burned.
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 15, 2008 — -- When the Santa Ana winds howl in Southern California, they often have disaster written on them. Their near-hurricane force combined with single-digit relative humidity and heat wave temperatures are the worst-case scenario in what has become virtually a year-round fire season here.
A "red flag warning" issued earlier in the week meant little when the first fire near Santa Barbara broke out on Thursday followed by a second firestorm in the San Fernando Valley on Friday.
And by this afternoon the wind-driven fires roared through Orange County where there is zero containment this evening as dozens of homes continue to burn.
Fire fighting resources and water pressure are stretched to limit and in the communities of Corona, Yorba Linda, Anaheim Hills and Brea 10,000 people have been ordered evacuated.
Residents had little warning and less time to gather belongings and get out, sometimes in smoke so thick they were unable to drive their cars to escape. A 50-unit apartment complex has been destroyed but miraculously there have been no deaths reported and only a few minor injuries.
With all the bad news there may finally be a little good news. The high wind advisory for the region has been revised. Winds are not expected to be above 40 miles an hour overnight or on Sunday.
That's better for fighting the fires, but does not mean the danger has passed.
The earlier fires in the Montecito-Santa Barbara area and in the northern foothill community of Sylmar in Los Angeles were fueled by winds over 70 mph and spread quickly forcing many in the fires' path to flee their homes in the middle of the night in the dark.
"We are at the mercy of the winds," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference during which he declared a local emergency.
The most total devastation was at the Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar, where hundreds of mobile homes burned to the ground and what was left looked like a blackened moonscape.
Fifty-foot flames swept across the mobile home community like a sheet, and Los Angeles fire Capt. Steve Ruda had the heartbreaking task of telling Oakridge residents gathered in a high school auditorium that all was lost.
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