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The fire left the mountains ghostly gray, vast slopes frozen still but for dust devils wandering the ash.

Fire crews were conducting a last big operation in the high country, burning a ridge above Hartman Ranch to keep the main fire from mushrooming into a road-less wilderness where condors soar.

The Thomas fire had already torn through disparate points of Southern California — beach enclaves, orange groves, rural canyons, golf retreats and suburban cul-de-sacs. Flames ignited fan palms against the Pacific surf and cedars on high granite peaks.

Residents along the flame front had seen fires come out of the mountains many times before — at horse ranches in Ojai, at farmworker camps in Fillmore, at Tuscan estates in stands of olive trees in Montecito.

But never had they all been threatened by a single fire.

The Thomas fire became California’s largest by size since modern recordkeeping began, standing at over 281,900 acres as of Friday. It raced from the urban edge to deep into the Los Padres National Forest like no fire before it, covering huge distances unobstructed and mostly unseen. The neighborhoods and cities that sit at the foot of these steep ranges — the Santa Ynez, Topatopa, Sierra Madre — had no vantage to the immense wilderness beyond the first ridge or two, no real grasp of what was seething out of sight.

When the fire came over those ridges again and again, to eat homes across a 55-mile swath of civilization, they had to confront that buried seed of doom that Californians forever try to forget: We settled in a dangerously temperamental land.

While we have fought to subdue its mood swings with human ingenuity — canals, levies, dams, injection wells, seismic retrofits, debris basins, brush clearance, tile roofs, hotshot crews, air drops — our efforts are feeble compared to what has and will come.

At the beginning of the year, following a devastating five years of drought, California was having the wettest rainy season ever recorded. The spillways of the mighty Oroville Dam were failing, part of the Central Valley had become an inland sea, and a quarter-mile stretch of Highway 1 was about to fall into the Pacific.

“We broke the drought with a sledgehammer,” said Jeffrey Mount, a hydrologist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

But just enough precipitation came as snow, with the storms spaced out over the season, to avoid a major calamity. “By all objective measures, we should have had catastrophic flooding,” Mount said. “We would be talking billions of dollars of damage and how many people died.”

A long scorching summer followed. In June, Death Valley hit 127 degrees, seven degrees shy of the hottest temperature recorded on earth. The melting snowpack caused flooding in the arid valleys below.

Under a sun that didn’t relent from spring through fall, grass and brush withered.

By October, the wine country erupted in the most destructive firestorm in state history, killing 44 people and claiming over 10,000 homes. Rains stayed far to the north. A high-pressure ridge formed like the one that started the drought in 2011, making this December one of the driest on record.

And so came the Thomas fire, primed to break another record.

When a high-pressure whorl moves east across Nevada and Utah, Santa Ana winds flow from the high desert to the ocean through three main grooves: the Banning Pass from the Coachella Valley, the Cajon Pass from the Victorville area and the Santa Clara River from the Antelope Valley.

In December, that swirling high-pressure dome stalled and wobbled in place. Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, likened it to Hurricane Harvey parking over Houston, swamping the city with days of torrential rains.

In Ventura County, the Santa Clara River Valley became a katabatic wind tunnel for two weeks. The spinning blob of pressure, shifting back and forth, changed the direction of the air flow as it fought with the prevailing sea breeze, constantly pushing the fire into new territory.

What was previously California’s largest modern-era blaze, the Cedar fire in San Diego County in 2003, followed a more typical Santa Ana pattern, racing to the coast through canyons running roughly westward.

It was far more deadly and costly than the Thomas because the gentle tilt of San Diego County invited more development into the fire zone. The Cedar’s toll was 15 people and 2,820 structures.

The Thomas fire has claimed 1,063 structures and one firefighter’s life. The terrain it consumed is more rugged, most of it protected or prohibitively steep to build on.

The population center hit the hardest, Ventura, was on the low edge of the foothills — vulnerable, but easy to evacuate. Homes that burned were less than a mile from the relative safety of the flat Santa Clara River Valley and the coast. No one died there.

Among the streets worst hit: Via Ondulando, a typical postwar street of ranch and Spanish homes, diamond grid windows, lush front lawns, birds of paradise, baby blue plumbago, Italian cypress.

Raul Gamino, a retired car salesman, had lived on the street for 42 years and used to hike in the hills above his home with his grandchildren. But he never gave much thought to how those dry-grass hills connected to the mountains beyond, how fire from far away could whip across it in his sleep. He never imagined a fire that would cover 440 square miles, as the Thomas would. His thoughts generally followed the view, the green coastal plain to Point Mugu and the Pacific.

Over the years, Gamino, 75, had watched countless hours of news reports on flames in Montecito or Santa Barbara. Those disasters seemed distant to him, way up the coast, the way a Lawndale or Culver City resident might watch a blaze in Malibu. He could smell the smoke, ponder the ash and the strange orange light. But they lived in fire country; he did not, he thought.

On Dec. 4, when a friend told him fire was burning up the valley in Santa Paula, he said, “Ah, it never gets here. It never happened before. I’ve been in Ventura for 53 years.”

That night, embers machine-gunned southwest down a boot heel of eroded ravines known as Sulphur Mountain.

As the sky lit up orange, he and his wife Yolanda fled with just a pillow and blankets. They slept in their SUV in a Walmart parking lot.

The fire followed the hills to the heart of downtown Ventura, burning right up to the back of City Hall, before that finger was stopped by flatter terrain and firefighting.

The Gaminos drove back up their hill three days later. In spots, the gutters had become adorned by the braided sculptures of melted alloy rims, wildfire’s ubiquitous signature on the urban edge.

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Blustery Santa Ana winds literally added fuel to the fires. which began Dec. 4.

Here are the numbers behind the blazes:

1 death
Firefighter Cory Iverson, from the San Diego unit of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), was killed on December 14. Iverson drove a fire engine and was killed on the east flank of the blaze.

That’s the size of the Thomas Fire, the largest one ripping across Southern California. It started in Ventura County and has been moving across Santa Barbara County.

The fire is the largest blaze in modern California history. It’s torched an area much larger than New York City.

$177 million
That’s how much money has been spent fighting the Thomas Fire, according to Cal Fire. And the cost is sure to grow, given the inferno was 70% contained over the weekend.

18,000 structures threatened

At least 18,000 structures were threatened by the Thomas Fire, according to Cal Fire.

1,000 structures destroyed
An estimated 1,063 structures had been wiped out by the Thomas Fire, Cal Fire reported. About 775 were single-family homes. Twenty-one commercial buildings burned.

More than 1,000 firefighters still involved
About 1,586 firefighters are tackling the Thomas Fire.

The Nevada Department of Corrections and Nevada Division of Forestry, which run conservation camps, sent six trained crews of minimum security inmates to help.

Thousands more firefighters — including from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington state — have been involved in battling other wildfires in the state.

95,000 evacuees
During the two-plus weeks the fires have burned, at least 95,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate, Cal Fire has said. Mandatory evacuation orders for the Thomas Fire have been lifted.

$10 billion
This year has been the costliest for wildfires in US history. Damage has topped $10 billion — and that was before the current fires began in Southern California.

Source: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/california-wildfires-by-the-numbers-177m-spent-1-000-structures-destroyed

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MARCUS YAM VIA GETTY IMAGES

LOS ANGELES ― There is smoke everywhere.

It’s Monday morning at 10 a.m., and I’m driving north up California’s famously stunning coastline toward the Thomas fire, the largest and most uncontrolled of five massive wildfires that have brought devastation to Southern California for the past week. I can see the enormous gloom ahead from 50 miles away ― brown smoke hovering over the southern edge of a fire that had consumed a staggering 230,000 acres so far.

I’m on my way to Ventura County, where the fire first began on Dec. 4 and from where it would eventually grow into the fifth largest in state history over the week that followed. Ventura is an iconic place, a once rugged beach town known for its citrus fruit farming and local surf spots, so often overshadowed by its big neighbor, Los Angeles.

WALLY SKALIJ VIA GETTY IMAGES

By the time I got there, a grey haze had once again settled over the county, and smoke filled the air. To the east, a massive fire was rapidly spreading, producing a thick brown smoke cloud that reached all the way north, to Santa Barbara County. Firefighters and firetrucks peppered the landscape, racing toward the still active sections of the blaze while other rigs drove further up the coast. A pizza delivery driver wore a dust mask to keep some of the smoke out of his lungs as he carried on with his day.

I made it to Ojai Valley by afternoon. Melted wires from burned telephone poles drooped low or lay tangled on the ground. New smoke from spot fires still burned on the side of the road of State Route 150. In the valley, the smoke smelled of campfires and asphalt, where areas had been blackened in the days before. I could feel the heat through my clothes where hot spots still burned or smoldered.

MATT FERNER / HUFFPOST

A town of 7,500 in the Topatopa Mountains, Ojai is world famous for its wine, nearby hiking trails, art galleries and new age shops. The fire had come dangerously close in the first days, but, for now, the small town had been spared from the worst of the blaze.

Now, three massive plumes of smoke surrounded the valley, growing larger by the minute. Dozens of smaller smoke trails caused by spot fires scattered across the landscape were an ominous sign. Who knew whether they would grow larger, too.

I stepped onto the embankment to take a photo of part of a ranch that had burned and collapsed, and I sunk into six inches of white ash. The path of destruction the fire had left in the area was dramatic and erratic. Some ranches were burned to the ground, leaving a stone chimney standing, a charred bathtub, and a burned out car with melted tires and windows. Others, often just directly adjacent, looked pristine ― trees still green, horses and cows eating in their pens.

Further down the road, department of transportation officials chopped down a tree that looked like it was burning from the inside. Others mounted new telephone poles to replace the burned ones.

Firefighters were everywhere ― on almost every street, at the restaurant, the gas station ― loading up their trucks for the next fight. More than 8,000 are currently deployed fighting fires in Southern California. Here in Ojai, they had come from counties up and down the coast. Signs praising the firefighters’ work were everywhere in the valley. “You kick ash,” one read, “We love our firefighters,” another said.

Driving further north, an even thicker layer of haze surrounded the car. The cloud stretched out from the growing fire in the Santa Ynez Mountains to U.S. 101, onto the valleys, onto the quaint towns that coastal California is known for. Through the haze, dozens of palm trees still stood at a tree farm on the shoreline at Faria Beach ― long a landmark among commuters along the stretch ― but their leaves were burned off, their trunks blackened and scorched.

MATT FERNER / HUFFPOST

This scene marked the entrance to an area where the fires were still very much active. Dead and dying cactus were left on the scorched hillsides next to U.S. 101, shriveled and brown. Each mile further north, the smoke-filled skies became darker. Whatever sunlight could penetrate through was a deep orange and red ― as if the sun was setting, all day long.

The dense smoke enveloped the iconic beaches ― Mussel Shoals, Rincon Point, Carpinteria State Beach ― and drifted out over the ocean for what looked like miles. Surfers ― ever dedicated and undeterred ― peppered the large swells that rolled in, filling their lungs with smoke.

MARK RALSTON VIA GETTY IMAGES

In the sleepy beach communities of Carpinteria, Summerland and Montecito, chunks of ash ― former trees, homes, photographs, memories ― rained down. The overhanging smoke was denser, blacker than in the south. For some locals here, dust masks weren’t enough, with many wearing respirator masks instead. A thin layer of white ash lined the streets and sidewalks in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Parked on a ridge across the valley in Summerland in the late afternoon, I watched the flames leaping high off of the Santa Ynez Mountains, devouring dry trees and plants. Smoke poured off of the hillsides. After 30 minutes, my shoulders and head were coated with ash. My eyes stung as the ash drifted into them.

GENE BLEVINS / REUTERS

As night set in, locals gathered on hillsides, sat on top of their cars or rooftops, and watched as the fire continued to creep closer and devastate the land they call home. Planes and helicopters dropped red fire retardant to slow the blaze.

The sun finally set. The sky turned orange, then dark red, then black, and then orange again ― but not from sunlight. It was fire light, which lit up the coast for miles.

NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

Source:  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/thomas-fire-reporter_us_5a30598ae4b07ff75afe89b2

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(CNN) One week after the Thomas Fire exploded from a brush fire to a raging inferno, thousands of firefighters made some headway Monday in their struggle to contain it.

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