Over 130 structures, mostly homes, destroyed in California wildfires

A WILDFIRE IN southern California, in the United States, has destroyed 132 structures, mostly homes, over the last two days according to fire officials.

Winds that have fueled the fire since Wednesday morning are forecast to ease over the coming days after the fire spread to an area about 83 km squared, slightly smaller than the size of Dublin city centre.

Ten people have been injured, Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff said, most of them suffered from smoke inhalation or other non-life-threatening injuries. A further 88 structures were damaged by the fire.

Roughly 10,000 people were evacuated as the mountain fire continued to threaten some 3,500 structures in suburban neighbourhoods, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo in Ventura County.

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Firefighters are working with water-dropping helicopters to protect homes on hillsides along the fire’s northeast edge near the city of Santa Paula, home to more than 30,000 people. Residents have been told to stay alert to the location of the flames.

Santa Anas are dry, warm and gusty northeast winds that blow from the interior of Southern California toward the coast and offshore, moving in the opposite direction of the normal onshore flow that carries moist air from the Pacific.

They typically occur during the fall months and continue through winter and into early spring.

Ariel Cohen, the National Weather Service’s meteorologist in charge in Oxnard, said Santa Ana winds were subsiding in the lower elevations but remained gusty across the higher elevations on Thursday evening.

The Santa Ana winds are expected to return early-to-midweek next week, Cohen said, after red alert warnings expired last night.