Cooler Weather Helps Crews Battle Calif. Fire
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LOS ANGELES –Firefighters yesterday took advantage of cooler, damper weather to battle a vast blaze ravaging Santa Barbara County as they tried to gain a foothold against the fire before the expected return of hotter, drier conditions.
Moist air currents from the ocean cooled temperatures to the high 70s yesterday, helping fire crews keep the four-day-old blaze from spreading. The fire, which has been burning since Tuesday, was less than a third contained yesterday afternoon.
“We’ve got a window here with the humid weather that’s really helping us. But we know we’re in this for the long haul,” a spokeswoman for the state Incident Management Team, Dixie Dies, said.
Temperatures are forecast to start climbing today and to reach the 90s by Thursday. The moist air currents are expected to dissipate, causing drier conditions, Ms. Dies said.
So far, the fire has consumed 13 square miles of Los Padres National Forest and has placed nearly 2,700 homes in jeopardy. Officials have ordered mandatory evacuations for hundreds of those homes, and issued warnings for others farther from the fire’s path. Ms. Dies did not know exactly how many homes were ordered evacuated.
Firefighting crews have made good progress in controlling the fire’s eastern and southern flanks, but flames moved aggressively to the west and northwest early yesterday, according to a statement from the Santa Barbara Ranger District.
The fire is blazing through 15-foot to 20-foot tall forest in extremely steep, rocky terrain. Crews are relying mainly on drops of flame retardant by helicopters and DC-10s to control the burning ridges, and canyons, Ms. Dies said.
Officials decided yesterday that the nearly 1,200 firefighters, from 22 states and the District of Columbia, are sufficient to combat the fire, Ms. Dies said. “They’re working incredibly hard,” she said.
The fire still had the potential to roll through a hilly area of ranches, housing tracts, and orchards between the towns of Goleta and Santa Barbara.
Investigators suspect the fire was human-caused. The U.S. Forest Service has asked for public help in determining how it was set.
Yesterday’s cooler weather also helped firefighters advance on a two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest.
