Camarillo Heights resident Maurice Kerr stood inside the shell of his burned-out home Thursday morning.
With the surrounding rubble still smoldering and smoke choking the air, the 68-year-old said he did his best to fight the wind-driven Mountain fire, which started raining embers on his home soon after it started Wednesday morning.
But facing 50- to 60-mph winds, the lone fire hose he was using — hooked up to his indoor pool — to try to beat back the flames wasn’t enough.
Nor were those of the firefighters who arrived and pulled him out as flames began to engulf the 4,800-square-foot ranch-style home, destroying his and dozens of others during the most extreme Santa Ana wind event to hit Southern California in years.
“I finally had to hose myself down to put myself out,” he said.
By Thursday afternoon, the Mountain fire had grown to more than 19,600 acres, forcing thousands to evacuate and straining local resources. The fire swept into foothill communities around Camarillo and Moorpark, pushed westward by offshore winds that the National Weather Service deemed “particularly dangerous.”
Shooting embers from the fire sparked new blazes up to 2½ miles ahead of the main fire line, officials said.
Early Thursday, officials issued additional evacuation orders for residents in the Santa Paula area, just north of the Santa Clara River. Officials warned that more than 30,000 people live in the potential path of the fire and need to be prepared for further warnings or orders as strong winds remained a concern through at least the evening.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Management estimated that more than 5,000 homes were either under evacuation order or warning.
“It remains dynamic and it remains dangerous,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said. Firefighters had reached zero containment.
After a long night of firefighting, helicopters were back in the air Thursday. Crews were focused on hot spots within the Santa Susana Mountains between Interstates 118 and 126, said Ventura County Fire Capt. Trevor Johnson.
“It’s rugged, steep ground that only our finest firefighters can even access,” Johnson said. However, he was clear that with mutual aid and their own crews, “We got the right people in the right places.”
On Wednesday night, resources for firefighters were stretched as fires erupted in multiple locations.
“We put hundreds of firefighter trucks on the system last night, hundreds pumping all night long,” Gardner said at a news conference on Thursday.
At one point, the chief acknowledged that “we did run out of water, high up in the heights,” then elaborated that there were areas where “water pressure was either diminished or water flow was diminished.”
Firefighters on the ground, however, did say the water supply interruptions slowed them from fighting fires at times.
It remains unclear exactly how many homes have been lost, but Times reporters in the area counted more than 50 homes destroyed by the fire and several more damaged.
