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California’s Largest Wildfire of the Year Forces Evacuations
The Madre Fire has grown to more than 52,500 acres in San Luis Obispo County.
A fast-moving California wildfire exploded to become the state’s biggest of the year, forcing evacuations and the closure of a highway, and evoking memories of the devastating blazes that laid waste to parts of the state in January.
The Madre Fire ignited Wednesday afternoon in San Luis Obispo County and has since grown to more than 52,500 acres, according to Cal Fire.
It was just 10% contained early Friday.
A section of Highway 166 was closed and evacuation orders issued across a wide area of San Luis Obispo County, the California Department of Transportation said.
Dry conditions have sparked more than 65 wildfires in California in the past two days, bringing fears that the coming weeks could see a repeat of the rapacious fires that tore through communities in January and left dozens dead.
The Los Angeles wildfires destroyed more than 15,000 homes, businesses and other structures. They are set to be the costliest in U.S. history, according to analysts, with estimates of damage reaching tens of billions of dollars.
A helicopter dropped water during firefighting efforts on Thursday.
San Luis Obispo County, in the Central Coast area, is much more sparsely populated than the greater Los Angeles area, but the fast-moving Madre Fire is expected to continue to spread.
“With the current weather, terrain, and fuel conditions this fire has seen exponential growth in less than 24 hours in multiple counties surrounding the San Luis Obispo County area,” the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday in a post on social media. “Smoke impacts will be far-reaching.”
Nearly 600 personnel were on the ground tackling the blaze, alongside more than 40 fire engines and four helicopters, Cal Fire said.
Several smaller fires were burning east of Los Angeles, in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Those were largely contained by Friday morning.
Dry conditions are likely to complicate efforts to contain the Madre Fire.
Hot and dry conditions are expected to continue in San Luis Obispo County through the weekend and into next week, Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said Friday.
“This is nothing too unusual for this time of year temperature-wise but the issue we could see is that there is no rainfall forecast for the next several days and even into next week,” Kleebauer said.
“Temperatures look set to go well into the 90s next week, and maybe even into triple digits in some of the adjacent valleys.”
The strong Santa Ana winds that fueled the earlier fires in Los Angeles aren’t a factor at this time of year, he added.
In January, winds reached a record-setting 100 miles an hour in mountainous areas and across urban regions of the Los Angeles basin, causing fires spread faster than crews could fight them.
Write to Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com
