SoCal FIREZONE – In Ventura County, fire crews battled on two fronts as the 90,000-acre Simi fire threatened exclusive canyon communities on the Los Angeles County line, and firefighters were credited with saving Fillmore from a 50,000-acre blaze that marched to the city limits.
No more homes were burned, authorities said, keeping at 30 the number of structures damaged or destroyed during the Simi fire, which began Friday night near Santa Clarita.
The fiercest firefight occurred shortly after daybreak Monday at the easternmost end of Simi Valley, near the equestrian community of Santa Susana Knolls and rugged Box Canyon, an eclectic mix of aging wooden cabins and whitewashed million-dollar homes.
There, 900 exhausted firefighters, who had been on the front lines for days, joined air tankers, helicopters and bulldozers to confront a huge blaze that jumped the Ronald Reagan Freeway and headed south.
That prompted mandatory evacuations in a cluster of canyon and hillside communities straddling the border of Ventura and Los Angeles counties, including parts of the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles.
Asia Carrera, an adult film actress who lives in a Chatsworth townhome, fled with her two cats in her metallic blue Corvette. She packed some clothes and her computer because she also runs an online porn business.
She said she lived in Calabasas during the Calabasas-Malibu fire in 1993. “I’ve been through it before, but this is a lot bigger,” she said. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I read all night. I sat by the window and looked at the sky glowing red.”
In a neighborhood just north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway, sheriff’s deputies were helping Ana and Monte Cox, a couple who train exotic animals for film projects. They had a Bengal tiger, two lion cubs and a cougar that they had evacuated from San Bernardino because of the fire there, and were being forced to move again. This time, they said, the animals were being taken to presumed safety in Northern California.
Twenty miles north, an additional 800 firefighters struggled to keep a separate wildfire in Los Padres National Forest from spreading and destroying homes in nearby Fillmore and Piru.
The fire, which began Thursday near Lake Piru, was 90% contained at 1,250 acres early Sunday. But late Sunday, swirling Santa Ana winds blew it out of control, forcing fire crews to burn strips of vegetation around homes to save them. By Monday morning, the fire had consumed 50,000 acres and was only 5% contained.
The Piru fire burned hundreds of acres at the southern edge of the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, and fire crews were trying to prevent it from pushing westward across Sespe Creek and heading toward the high mountains that ring Santa Paula and the Ojai Valley.