Fast-moving wildfires forced officials to order the evacuations of nearly 250,000 people in San Diego County on Monday, including hundreds of patients from a hospital and nursing homes.
More than a dozen wildfires have engulfed Southern California, from San Diego up to Santa Barbara County. Fanned by fierce desert winds, the fires have killed at least one person and are threatening tens of thousands of homes. Fires have burned about 100,000 acres in San Diego County alone, said county Supervisor Ron Roberts. "This is a major emergency," he said.
Warm temperatures and strong winds created "dramatically worse" conditions overnight as flames shot 200 feet high, said Bill Metcalf, chief of the North County Fire Protection District in the San Diego area.
Some of the worst damage was in Malibu, where a church, homes and a historic castle were destroyed. Firefighters acknowledged they were overwhelmed. “You do not expect something to stretch our resources to this magnitude,” Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Sam Padilla said. “To try and staff something this big, you cannot predict it.”
“This fire is zero percent contained, which means we're at the mercy of the wind.”
PAMELA CONLEY ULICH, acting mayor of Malibu, on the wildfires ravaging Southern California, which have claimed at least one life
“The church is not the building, the church is the people.”
Pastor MICHAEL MUDGETT, after wildfires destroyed the Malibu Presbyterian
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