California Fire Explodes to 5,000 Acres, Thousands Evacuated

“There’s a lot of smoke, the air is really, really bad,” Jennifer Elkins, president of the Val Verde Civic Assn., said Friday. Her neighborhood was under an evacuation order Thursday afternoon, but that downgraded to a warning around midnight, when she returned.

“We’re just kind of staying locked up indoors and keeping an eye on things,” Elkins said. “This is a really tough fire season and I’m really glad the fire department is really taking every fire seriously. ... This is a pretty big threat to the community.”

On Thursday “we were seeing significant plume development, we were seeing very rapid fire growth… within certain areas of the fire,” Dowd said.

“It’s ripe for fires and fire spread,” said Mike Wofford, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard. He said temperatures may peak Friday at 98 degrees around the Canyon fire, but the heat, winds, low humidity and parched landscape would continue to create elevated fire conditions through the weekend.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the Santa Clarita Valley, urged residents to heed evacuation alerts.

“Extreme heat and low humidity in our north county have created dangerous conditions where flames can spread with alarming speed,” Barger said in a statement. “If first responders tell you to leave, go — without hesitation. The Eaton fire showed us how quickly devastation can strike.”

Senior staff attorney Melissa Camacho said she was “gravely concerned” about the growing fire.

“January’s Hughes fire burned within a half-mile of the jails and not a single person incarcerated there was evacuated,” Camacho told The Times. “It’s heartbreaking that, less than eight months later, the 5,000 people in the jails and their loved ones will spend another sleepless night watching a fire and praying that it doesn’t reach them.”

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which operates the facility, said it was actively monitoring fire conditions and was in constant communication with fire and county officials.

“Similar to evacuation plans implemented at Pepperdine University in Malibu, the Fire Department has advised that a shelter-in-place strategy is the safest option for custody staff and inmates, given the building construction type and current fire behavior,” agency spokesperson Nicole Nishida said in a statement. The area around the building has been cleared of brush and has wide defensible space, she said.