Southern California’s Hughes Fire Consumes Over 10K Acres So Far

Southern California is suffering through a battery of fires during this fire season.

On the heels of the devastating Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires which are still smoldering over two weeks later, Santa Clarita is now braving their own wildfire. On Wednesday morning at around 10:30 a.m., a 50-acre fire broke out near California’s Lake Castaic, which is about an hour from Los Angeles. Crews were quickly dispatched but the Santa Ana winds were too high and the blaze grew to 500 acres in less than two hours.

By 7:00 that evening, the fire had ballooned to 9 thousand acres. Now the fire sits at 10,400 acres with 56% containment. When you hear about containment percentages, that indicates crews have created a barrier with a control line that prevents the fire from burning past that line.

Miraculously, the fire stretches north of and around Lake Castaic. Crews have been able to utilize the lake water as well as fire retardant to knock down the fire. Some 16,000 residents are still under an evacuation warning as crews do their best to work ahead of the fire, which is reported to be calming down.

Most of the burned area lies in an open area, with no structures affected. A high wind warning is expected through Friday morning. Air quality has suffered since the beginning of all of the fires, not just the Hughes fire. The Hughes fire has turned out to be much different than what we witnessed in the Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires.

As mentioned, the Hughes fire is primarily in an open field area, but crews were not working against 100-mile-an-hour wind gusts. Instead, the winds on Wednesday were topping off at about 60 miles per hour. Still a brisk wind, but it didn’t carry the blaze as easily as it had in the other fire events.

Something Southern California desperately needs is rain. The state has had virtually no rainfall since 0.13 of an inch of rain fell last in May. Rain can obviously help with the dry brush and trees, making a fire risk less severe. Power may be cut to lower the risk of a downed power line in the event of high winds.

Luckily, a weekend storm is expected to bring rain which will help the already-taxed fire crews in the battle against multiple fires. But officials warn of possible mudslides in certain areas. With heavy rain and no vegetation to block, slow and absorb the water, the ground can turn to mud, thus threatening the homes around the cliffs.