Rain Helps Turn Back One Wildfire Other Fires Dying Down

Vicki Harrop could feel the heat and hear the roar of flames as a wind-whipped wildfire bore in on her house. Then rain began to fall and a cheer rose up along her street.

“You could immediately feel the heat subside and you started seeing the steam coming off the hills instead of smoke,” she said Saturday. “I just felt a huge sense of relief.”

The brief storm late Friday was part of a winter front that blocked the return of the dry, seasonal Santa Ana wind, which had fanned a half-dozen fires that devastated parts of Southern California last week.

The front also dropped temperatures to overnight lows in the 50s, chilly by southern California standards.

“It’s so cold (the flames) just laid down,” said Ventura County Fire Department spokeswoman Alison Schember.

Cool, humid weather was expected to continue through the weekend, the National Weather Service said. Humidity on Saturday ranged from 23 percent at the desert community of Palm Springs to 72 along the coast at San Diego.

Heavy thunderstorms early Saturday bruised San Diego County, dumping rain, slamming pea-sized hail against windows and even dusting some areas with snow that quickly melted. About 3,000 residents briefly lost power.

With help from the shift in weather, firefighters in Ventura, Malibu and San Diego counties turned their attention Saturday toward containing and mopping up the fires that destroyed more than 100 homes and blackened nearly 62 square miles.

Northerly wind was blowing at about 25 mph, down from 70 mph earlier in the week.

More than 100 homes were lost in last week’s blazes, most in an 8,600-acre blaze at Carlsbad in San Diego County. Officials called that fire fully contained by fire lines Saturday but not controlled.

The Ventura fire 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles began Friday evening, apparently started by an arsonist, in a rugged, brush-covered park. It spread quickly toward Harrop’s neighborhood about three blocks from City Hall.

Homes closest to the flames were evacuated and the homecoming football game at Ventura High School was halted as hazy smoke covered the field.

By Saturday morning, the 450-acre fire was 80 percent contained, Schember said.

In Malibu, about 30 miles to the south, a 13,010-acre fire was 90 percent contained. It destroyed six houses and two mobile homes earlier in the week as the Santa Ana wind drove it through the Santa Monica mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Near the U.S.-Mexico border, the 14,000-acre Otay Mountains fire was 90 percent contained after a half-inch of rain fell during the night.

Along the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, a 4,400-acre fire in the scenic Big Sur region was only 30 percent contained Saturday.