Wildfire in Ventura County prompts Californians to flee their homes

CNN
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Terrie Morin, 60, and her husband, Dave, were at the hair salon when they heard about a raging wildfire heading toward their Camarillo home Wednesday morning.

The couple were hosting two guests at the time, but because their guests were working late, Morin suspected they were sleeping through the home’s fire alarms.

“I run into the house and I knock on the door and they didn’t hear me. They were knocked out,” Morin told CNN. “Get the dog. Get out of here. You don’t have time, just get out!” she remembered telling them.

Ten minutes later, Dave noticed sparks in their backyard. The temperature was also rising.

“It was hot. It was so hot,” Morin recalled.

Dozens of homes in California’s Ventura County were set on fire in a sweeping wildfire that burned through thousands of acres of land in just a few hours midweek — prompting authorities to issue more than 14,000 evacuation notices across the region.

The wildfire began early Wednesday and was fueled by wind gusts in excess of 60 mph. The flames have burned through more than 20,485 acres of land according to Cal Fire.

The families who evacuated at a moment’s notice, some who say they have now lost their homes, are dealing with other losses that can also be devastating, from everyday items like medicine and shoes to meaningful possessions such as sculptures and artwork, to precious souvenirs from a child’s birth or a parent’s life.

At least 132 properties have been destroyed by the fire, while 88 have been damaged, Ventura County Fire Department officials said Thursday evening. Ten damage inspection teams have been deployed to inspect structures along the fire’s path.

Ten people suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the mountain fire, mostly related to smoke inhalation, Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said.

When Morin, her husband and their friends came out of the house, the fire had taken hold of the surrounding trees. Smoke was everywhere, she told CNN.

In a panic, the California native grabbed her husband’s diabetes medication, her laptop and some dresses, but she couldn’t get everything she wanted in time — including clothes and other memorabilia from when her son was a baby.

The four adults escaped through clouds of thick smoke.

“We couldn’t see anything. We were basically just driving in the smoke. (Dave) was scared. And I told him, ‘Dave, pull over. Let me take the wheel. I’m fine. Pull over,'” Morin said.

According to the sheriff’s office, a total of 400 homes were evacuated by officials, while 800 homes knocked on appeared to have already been evacuated; 250 residents chose to stay, Fryhoff said.

“We see it over and over and over again: People have the best intentions to stay and defend their homes right up until the time the fire hits their home,” said Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner.

“And it gets hot and it gets smoky. You can’t see, you can’t breathe, and you certainly can’t defend your home. And then you get stuck, and then our firefighters have to go in and pull you out.”

Some, with fireproofing in the structures of their homes, were exceptions. Steven Snyder was one of them.

Sinder, who lives in Camarillo, went to bed Wednesday as the mountain fire raged around his fireproof home.

“When I looked out the window, it looked like little campfires lit,” Snyder told CNN, adding that he saw the fire coming over the hill in his direction.

When Snyder woke up Thursday, the land around him was charred. Many of his neighbors’ homes were on fire.

Firefighters in the area urged Snyder, his wife, daughter and 7-week-old grandson to stay home. The family had lost power, but had plenty of water and food –– which they shared with firefighters.

Firefighters have been working aggressively to bring the blaze under control by dropping water from helicopters. The fire, which was at 0% containment for over 24 hours, is now at 5% containmentaccording to Cal Fire.

The worst winds, which caused the fire to spread faster Wednesday into Thursday morning, were gusts of 30 mph to 40 mph, according to a CNN weather analysis. Winds have been steadily decreasing through Thursday afternoon, and conditions are expected to improve with increasing humidity through the weekend.

Winds will be 5 mph to 10 mph mph on Friday –– a huge improvement from the 60 mph gusts earlier in the week.

Red flag warnings have expired for the Los Angeles area and will expire for Los Angeles and the Ventura County Mountains on Friday at 11 PST.

The cause remains unknown

While the reasons for the mountain fire’s rapid spread are clear, the cause remains unknown, a Ventura County fire official said Thursday morning.

The county fire department’s investigative unit is working on several things, including determining whether power lines were involved in causing the fire, Johnson said when asked about power lines as a possible cause.

“I could tell you there can be a million things that start a fire,” Johnson said. “When a fire like that breaks, we don’t go first to ‘What started this?’ Our job is to bring stabilization, so we immediately went to work in that regard.”

Other devastating wildfires in the past have been blamed on downed power lines that remained live, prompting power companies to plan wide cordons before it can happen again.

As a precaution, Southern California Edison, Southern California’s main electricity supplier, cut power on purpose overnight Wednesday to 69,931 customers – including 23,603 in Ventura County – as part of their Public Safety Power Shutoff plan.

Fall marks a critical turning point for California’s fire season.

The combination of very windy and very dry conditions forms the basis of the landscape and makes for tinder-dry fuel that can easily ignite with the slightest spark and then spread quickly in high winds.

As the world warms due to fossil fuel pollution, scenarios like the wildfire may play out more frequently.

The number of extreme fall fire weather days in California has more than doubled since the early 1980s due to warmer and drier autumns as global temperatures rise, CNN previously reported.

CNN’s Taylor Romine, Rebekah Riess, Mary Gilbert and Robert Shackelford contributed to this report.