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Title : Fierce dry winds drive California wildfires toward San Diego
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Fierce dry winds drive California wildfires toward San Diego

Firefighters battled several intense wind-driven wildfires early today that have swept across densely populated Southern California, destroying at least 500 structures and chasing 190,000 people from their homes over the past five days.

More than 5,700 firefighters from across California and the region worked to stop the spread of six large wildfires and other smaller blazes that erupted since Monday, ranging from Santa Barbara County down the Pacific Coast to within the city limits of Los Angeles and beyond to the area north of San Diego.

Firefighters work at the top of a hill on Thursday to extinguish a part of the so-called Lilac Fire, a fast moving wildfire burning through Bonsall, Calif. Blazes swept by Southern California's notorious westward winds have forced tens of thousands of evacuations and destroyed hundreds of buildings. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

The flames have been stoked by the region's notorious, dry, westward Santa Ana winds, which officials warned could reach hurricane strength.

Firefighters and helicopters sprayed and dumped buckets full of water and fire retardant on flames against a hellish backdrop of flaming mountains and walls of smoke as the blaze hopscotched over highways and railroad tracks and torched rows of houses.

The raging fires have forced the evacuation of about 190,000 people and threatened 23,000 homes as of late Thursday, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) said on Twitter. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the U.S.'s second largest with more than 640,000 students, said it closed more than a quarter of its nearly 1,100 schools for the second day in a row on Friday. The University of California Santa Barbara cancelled Friday classes as well.

Not the typical morning commute... http://pic.twitter.com/kJIOQeqsIK

— @WLV_investor

Closures on L.A. highways

Earlier in the week, one of the fires reached into the wealthy enclave of Bel-Air on the west side of Los Angeles, near major city landmarks like the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Getty Museum. Some major highways in the densely populated area were intermittently closed. The Skirball Fire, as it has been dubbed, has forced hundreds of residents in the wooded hills near Bel-Air to evacuate and charred more than 192 hectares.

The so-called Thomas Fire northwest of L.A. grew to 46,540 hectares from 38,850 hectares and destroyed 439 structures, officials said. More than 2,600 firefighters from as far away as Portland, Ore., and Nevada were battling the blaze, which was five per cent contained.

A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop on the Lilac Fire in Bonsall, Calif. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

North of San Diego, another blaze called the Lilac Fire grew from just 1.6 hectares to 1,659 hectares in only a few hours on Thursday, CAL FIRE said, prompting California Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency for San Diego County. The blaze destroyed 20 structures and prompted evacuations and road closures. Propane tanks under several houses exploded from the heat, sounding like bombs, according to a Reuters photographer at the scene.

No one is known to have died so far as a result of the fires, but three people sustained burn injuries and another suffered from smoke inhalation in the Lilac Fire. Two firefighters were also injured, CAL FIRE said on Twitter early on Friday. 

In the seaside enclave of Faria Beach, caught between burning mountains and the Pacific Ocean northwest of Ventura, fires spread down the smoking hills. Flames jumped the heavily used U.S. 101 highway and headed toward clusters of beach houses. Firefighters lined up along a railroad track, the last barrier from the flames. 

Heavy smoke made breathing hazardous in some areas, and residents were urged to stay inside. Ventura County authorities said air pollution measures in the Ojai Valley were "off the charts."

The Los Angeles Police Department tweeted a photo of a police officer in a respirator rescuing a cat.

The Los Angeles County animal shelter said it was hosting 184 pets including llamas, donkeys and horses while reports said 29 horses were burned to death on Tuesday at a ranch in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The Southern California wildfires could be seen by the International Space Station crew from their vantage point in low Earth orbit. NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik photographed the plumes of smoke on Dec. 5. (Randy Bresnik/NASA)

Utilities cut power to customers in some mountain communities northeast of San Diego and east of Los Angeles to lessen fire danger. The outage could last several days.

The fires are the second outbreak to ravage parts of California this autumn. The celebrated wine country in the northern part of the state was hit by wind-driven wildfires in October that killed at least 43 people, forced 10,000 to flee their homes and consumed at least 9,900 hectares north of the San Francisco Bay area.

Massive wildfires in California force over 100,000 people from homes1:38

The California Department of Insurance said the northern California blazes caused insured losses of more than $9 billion US.

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