Cooler temperatures — and maybe some showers — headed to SoCal this weekend.
But don’t expect to be out and about enjoying the sun with your family and friends. The wildfires have been raging in Southern California in recent days, and as of Monday, 8,700 people had been ordered to evacuate their homes, with 14 counties expected to be on evacuation orders.
Fire officials have warned that it could be two to three months before the fires are fully contained. And that time could be a lot longer, if the blaze continues to spread through Southern California.
This weekend’s heat wave — though not so serious as one that scorched parts of Southern California in 2012 — is partly the result of a rapidly developing drought.
The National Weather Service has issued a drought watch for Northern California and the Central Valley. An earlier report from the Weather Channel listed the same region as one of the top 20 regions on the most at-risk list.
So far, though, the drought has only led to a “minimal risk” to the region’s water supply system, the forecast said.
However, a fire that broke out on July 26 in Santa Clarita, and quickly escalated, was the kind that would have hit a city like Los Angeles with a much heavier impact.
It’s still a mystery how the fire spread so quickly.
The fire jumped the Santa Clarita Reservoir, sending up a plume of smoke that forced an evacuation in the community of West Hills.
But the fire started in a vacant house. It wasn’t until firefighters started working the blaze that authorities realized there were other fires nearby, and they realized that they needed to make an evacuation plan.
In the days after the fire started, authorities told many residents to leave their homes by air. But residents refused.
It’s not clear how many evacuees were left behind.
The first evacuation order was issued on July 30, and the Santa Clarita sheriff estimated at least 1,700 people were evacuated. That order was extended on Aug. 13, when authorities said they received more evacuees and that there were still 890 people at risk in the area.
The sheriff estimated that there were approximately 800 people evacuated that day. That number was revised down by authorities to about 300 due to more evacuees, as well as potential water restrictions for those who couldn’t leave on their own.
