Falling temperatures continue to provide a valuable boost to firefighters battling three major wildfires across Southern California on Thursday, with crews finally beginning to establish containment lines while slowing their spread.
However, the fires continued to rage despite the headway made, burning across counties and affecting air quality throughout the region.
Multiple fires burning in Southern California — including the #LineFire, #BridgeFire, and #AirportFire — are negatively impacting air quality for much of the region. Poor air quality can affect your health.
Here’s how to stay safe when the air is smoky:
1. Check Local Air… pic.twitter.com/8Pnz3mTVDZ— CAL FIRE (@CAL_FIRE) September 10, 2024
As of Thursday morning, the Airport Fire, burning in Riverside County and Orange County, was estimated at 23,410 acres, with 5% containment.
Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi said about 770 firefighters were battling the blaze “and more are coming to assist.”
“This marine layer and cooler temperatures along with the higher relative humidity are helping firefighters grow our containment fires and extinguish hot spots,” Concialdi said Thursday morning.
“Unfortunately, due to the marine layer helicopters were unable to fly last night, but starting this morning our firefighters are improving those containment lines and going into those burn areas and extinguishing hot spots.”
As temperatures rise Thursday, “residents will see smoke,” Concialdi said.
“We are constructing a large dozer containment line from below the fire, starting in Robinson Ranch and behind the communities of Dover Canyon and Coto de Caza all the way to Ortega Highway just in case we have any wind shift or if the Santa Ana winds develop at some point,” Concialdi said.
“This will be a barrier and will slow the fire and keep the fire away from those communities.”
At a Wednesday afternoon news conference, OCFA Division Chief Kevin Fetterman reported two civilian injuries — one who suffered a medical emergency and one with unspecified burns — and a total of 10 firefighter injuries.
Concialdi said earlier Wednesday most of those firefighter injuries were heat-related, “but one did get stung by numerous bees, and one sustained minor burns and the other couple had some injuries from fighting the fire.
All have been released from the hospital and are doing well, he added.
Crews were concentrating efforts on the fire’s southeastern flank along State Route 74, also called the Ortega Highway, to ensure structure protection and douse hot spots, officials said.
Additional evacuation warnings were also in effect for a host of Riverside County areas near the fire zone, generally in an area east of the Orange County line, north of the San Diego County line, south of Bedford Motor Way, and west of Interstate 15.
Early Tuesday afternoon, some of those warnings became evacuation orders, affecting an area generally north of the San Diego County line, east of the Orange County line, south of Lake Elsinore near the base of Ortega Highway and west of South Main Divide Road/Grand Avenue.
The end of the region’s prolonged heat wave began assisting in the firefight, Concialdi said. Burn scars from previous blazes also provided much-needed fire breaks.
Structures have been damaged in both Orange and Riverside counties, although the exact number remained under assessment.
The Airport Fire began about 1 p.m. Monday near Trabuco Canyon Road in the area of the remote-controlled airplane airport, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Sean Doran. By Tuesday morning, the fire had raced up the canyons and hillsides and crested into Riverside County, burning toward the El Cariso and Lake Elsinore areas, where evacuation warnings and orders were in place.
The Ortega Highway was closed east of Quarry to Grand Avenue in Lake Elsinore. That area had been under a voluntary evacuation warning, but late Tuesday morning, mandatory evacuation orders were issued for areas along the highway near Caspers Park.
There were other roads were closed near the fire:
— Plano Trabuco / Joshua Drive
— Santa Margarita Parkway / Antonio Parkway
— Plano Trabuco / Robinson Ranch
— Avenida Empressa / Santa Margarita Parkway
— Antonio Parkway / Alas de Paz
— Trabuco Canyon / Trabuco Creek
— Santiago Canyon Road
— Live Oak Canyon Road.
Fire crews on Wednesday deployed additional resources into the El Cariso area in Riverside County southwest of Lake Elsinore in hopes of shoring up structure protection and hoping to make a stand against the Airport Fire’s advance.
Talbot Hayes of the Cleveland National Forest said the fire was being driven by weather, fuel and topography. Firefighters were working in areas with grass as high as 4 feet with chaparral as high as 8 feet, Hayes said. The terrain is at times “barely hikeable even for our most fit firefighters.”
Orange County Fire Authority Deputy Chief TJ McGovern told reporters Monday night that the fire was accidentally sparked by a county work crew. McGovern said Orange County Public Works crews were working in the area near Trabuco Creek Road, using heavy equipment to place boulders meant to replace barriers used to restrict access to the vegetation.
Thousands in San Bernardino County were forced to evacuate as another wildfire — the Line Fire — tore through more than 37,000 acres. The blaze was 18% contained as of Thursday morning, according to Cal Fire.
The Line Fire first began in San Bernardino County, along Base Line and Aplin streets in the city of Highland, last Thursday. Since then, mandatory evacuations have been expanded to include several communities this past week as it exploded in size.
The Line Fire evacuation orders, citing “an immediate threat to life,” include:
— All undeveloped land east of Hwy 330 to Summertrail Place and north of Highland Avenue
— Communities of Running Springs and Arrowbear Lake
— The community of Forest Falls
— The community of Mountain Home Village
— The communities of Angelus Oaks, Seven Oaks and all campgrounds and cabins in the area
— Green Valley Lake north from Highway 18 along Green Valley Lake Road
— The area of Big Bear from the dam east to Wildrose Lane and the south shoreline south to Bluff Lake Basin, and
— San Bernardino issued Forest Order NO. 05-12-00-24-09, creating a Forest Closure Area around the Line Fire. All National Forest lands, trails, and roads are closed to the public within that zone.
Authorities announced that they had arrested Justin Wayne Halstenberg, 34, of Norco Tuesday on suspicion of starting the Line Fire.
And in the small community of Wrightwood, about 90 minutes outside Los Angeles, authorities implored residents to flee the exploding Bridge Fire, which has already burned more than a dozen homes in that area alone.
The Bridge Fire, which grew tenfold in a day this week, has burned 78 square miles, torched at least 33 homes and six cabins in total and has forced the evacuation of at least 10,000 people. The cause of the fire is not yet known. It remained zero percent contained as of Thursday morning.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said the fire moved extraordinarily fast across complex terrain, likely giving residents less time to evacuate than usual and surprising even seasoned fire officials.
The Bridge Fire “had to go up mountain sides, burn down slope, jump across valleys, burn across new ridges, and then make it down slope again at least two other times in effectively one burning period,” he said.
The full extent of the damage caused by the fires remains unclear.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he had secured assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for all the fires in the state.
Just declared a state of emergency in LA, San Bernardino, Orange, & Riverside as we continue to fight these devastating fires.
We’re deploying all available resources.
Grateful for our heroic firefighters and first responders working around the clock. pic.twitter.com/WLZiD4nK9e
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 12, 2024
Newsom also sent National Guard troops in to help with evacuations.
The White House said President Joe Biden was monitoring the situation.
California is only now heading into the teeth of the wildfire season but already has seen nearly three times as much acreage burn than during all of 2023. The wildfires have threatened tens of thousands of homes and other structures across Southern California since they accelerated during a triple-digit heat wave over the weekend.
Scientists say climate change is responsible for exacerbating the conditions that contributed to the state’s massive, destructive wildfires.
City News Service and Associated Press contributed to this report.