Maria fire in Ventura County lead to Great Explosion
The blaze, which has been dubbed the Maria fire, broke out atop South Mountain, just south of Santa Paula, and was moving toward the small agricultural towns of Somis and Saticoy so these two towns are threatened. At least two stuctures have been lost, and 1,800 are threatened.
Authorities issued mandatory evacuations for a swath of homes bordered by South Mountain Road on the north, Highway 118 on the south, Los Angeles Avenue on the west and Balcom Canyon Road on the east. With night falling, firefighters were trying to box the fire in that area and keep the flames from spreading north toward Santa Paula and south toward Somis.
By midnight, winds were still blowing the fire from the northeast to the southwest, with sensors recording winds at about 20 to 30 mph, said David Gomberg, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Oxnard office. A huge problem was the persistently dry air the relative humidity in the area of the fire was a bone-dry 5%.
There’s a possibility that critical fire weather could persist into Saturday.
Santa Ana winds are expected to get weaker each day, and Gomberg said forecasters expect fire risk to significantly diminish by Sunday. “As soon as we lose the wind by Sunday or Monday, we’ll definitely be in a better situation,” Gomberg said.
The cause of this strong Santa Ana wind event has been a particularly powerful mass of cold high-pressure air sitting over the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin over Nevada and Utah, causing record low temperatures for this time of year there.
I hope this disaster ends soon.
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