A Ventura County wildfire that ignited on a day of red-flag warnings across California has burned 14,000 acres and forced evacuations near Oxnard.
The Mountain Fire was reported shortly before 9 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6, and within an hour was estimated at 1,000 acres. By 7 p.m. it was 14,159 acres (22 square miles) with 0% containment, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.
Evacuations were ordered for the 58-square-mile area shown in red on the map above, including some neighborhoods in Camarillo. The black line indicates the approximate perimeter at mid-afternoon Wednesday.
For updates on evacuation orders, see the Ventura County sheriff’s Facebook page or the Ventura County emergency website.
Wind-carried embers were starting spot fires as far as 2½ miles away, Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said at an afternoon press conference. The department’s public information officer, Andy VanSciver, said “a number of structures” were known to have been destroyed, but a count would not be available until Thursday.
Fixed-wing aircraft were grounded by high winds; helicopters were requested for firefighting efforts.
Red-flag warnings, indicating heightened fire danger, were in effect Wednesday for much of coastal California. The warning for the Ventura area cited humidity as low as 10% and strong Santa Ana winds from the northeast. Sustained winds were around 50 mph, with gusts up to 80 mph, and those conditions were expected to continue at least until sunset Thursday, Gardner said at the press conference.
About 25 miles to the southeast, in Malibu, another wildfire was reported around 9 a.m. near the Pepperdine University campus. A shelter-in-place order was issued for an area south of Pacific Coast Highway.
The Mountain Fire is just south of the area of the Thomas Fire, which started in December 2017 and burned 281,893 acres, destroying more than 1,000 structures.
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