By David Swanson
CASTAIC, California (Reuters) -A rapidly growing wildfire broke out some 50 miles (80 km) north of Los Angeles on Wednesday, burning 5,054 acres (20 square km) while two major fires burning in the metropolitan area for more than two weeks were getting under control, fire officials said.
The Hughes Fire in the Castaic Lake area of Los Angeles County forced evacuations with warnings of “immediate threat to life,” while much of Southern California remained under a red-flag warning for extreme fire risk due to strong, dry winds.
Some 19,000 people, a number roughly equal to the entire population of the community of Castaic, were under mandatory evacuation orders, according to Los Angeles County officials. Another 16,000 were under evacuation warnings.
Los Angeles County, the state of California and the U.S. Forest Service said their firefighters were responding. The Angeles National Forest said its entire 700,000-acre (2,800-square-km) park in the San Gabriel Mountains was closed to visitors.
As a result of the red-flag warning, some 1,000 firefighters were deployed around Southern California in anticipation of fast-moving fires, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.
Helicopters scooped water out of a lake to drop on the fire, video on KTLA television showed, as flames spread to the water’s edge.
Interstate 5, a major north-south highway, was closed in the area of the fires due to poor visibility, the California Highway Patrol said.
While the new fire raged, the two deadly fires that have ravaged Los Angeles came under greater control, Cal Fire said.
The Eaton Fire that scorched 14,021 acres (57 square km) east of Los Angeles was 91% contained, while the larger Palisades Fire, which has consumed 23,448 acres (95 square km) on the west side of Los Angeles, stood at 68% contained.
Containment measures the percentage of a fire’s perimeter that firefighters have under control.
Since the two fires broke out on Jan. 7, they have burned an area nearly the size of Washington D.C., killed 28 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures, Cal Fire said. At one point, 180,000 people were under evacuation orders, according to Los Angeles County officials.
Private forecaster AccuWeather projects damage and economic losses at more than $250 billion.
A series of smaller wildfires has been extinguished or brought largely under control in Southern California the past two weeks.
(Reporting by David Swanson in Castic and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California;Editing by Mary Milliken, Sandra Maler and Rod Nickel)
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