Cooler weather, gentler winds help crews get a handle on Franklin fire
Lessening winds and increasing humidity are helping firefighters make progress in the battle against the Franklin fire in Malibu, where crews reached 30% containment Thursday evening.
The fire ignited near Pepperdine University on Monday night amid 65-mph wind gusts and critically low humidity levels that prompted the National Weather Service to issue a red flag alert for most of Los Angeles County. That warning expired at 1 p.m. Wednesday as wind speeds flagged, helping to bring relief to the nearly 2,000 firefighters combating the 4,000-acre blaze.
Thursday brought “cloud cover, cooler weather, higher humidities, and we lost the red flag event,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief Eleni Pappas at a noon news conference. “We are expecting to be able to get cooperation from the weather and get more of a ... line around our fire and get total containment.”
The shift in weather was allowing some limited re-population of areas Thursday. Still, large chunks of the city remained out of bounds due to hazards with downed power lines.
At least nine structures have been confirmed damaged and six destroyed. Fire officials warned that the count could rise as more homes are assessed.
A few days of cooler temperatures are expected across California before a low pressure system brings high winds that could increase fire risk later this week.
Through Thursday in the L.A. area, locally strong wind gusts of up to 30 mph were expected as well as areas of very low humidity. These conditions, however, no longer meet extreme hazard criteria, according to the weather service.
A low-pressure system swept into the region Thursday, bringing with it a 20% chance of afternoon rain, said weather service meteorologist Kristan Lund.
Although any rainfall is welcome, Pappas cautioned that the amount expected Thursday would not eliminate the fire danger posed by dry brush in the Malibu mountains.
“Unfortunately, the fuels are dried out at this time of year,” she said. “Once an ember gets in there, there’s so much fuel in there, and it burns with such a high BTU, that it doesn’t matter what rain we get today or in the coming days. But [rain] will definitely help and provide better conditions for firefighters.”
Temperatures will remain cool Thursday and Friday, with overnight lows in the 40s and daytime highs in the 60s. On Saturday, there is another chance for light rain showers in L.A. County. More substantial precipitation is expected farther north, with heavy showers forecast for San Luis Obispo County.
And in Northern California, a powerful storm system is forecast for Thursday, Friday and over the weekend, bringing 1 to 2 inches of rainfall to the Sacramento and San Francisco areas as well as dumping 10 to 20 inches of snow in elevations above 5,000 feet in the the Sierra.
In inland L.A. County, humidity levels rebounded to the 30%-to-50% range Thursday after a dangerously dry start to the week, according to the weather service.
Humidity levels started rising near the Franklin fire Wednesday and had reached the low teens in Malibu by the afternoon. Those levels continued to rise on Thursday and reached up to 70% by the Malibu coast in the afternoon, according to the weather service.
On Thursday, the return of onshore winds, moving from the ocean up the mountains, is expected to help humidity levels continue to rise, which in turn should help firefighters get a handle on the blaze, Lund said.
On Monday, humidity levels werein the single digits while fearsome Santa Ana winds were gusting up to 65 mph. This menacing combination prompted the weather service to issue a rare “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning.
The National Weather Service office issued a rare ‘Particularly Dangerous Situation’ red flag warning for the coming days in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
These extreme warnings should, on average, be issued only once every three to five years, according to the weather service. But this year there have been two back to back.
On Nov. 5, a “particularly dangerous situation” alert was issued for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The following day, the Mountain fire exploded in Camarillo Heights and, fueled by gusts of up to 80 mph, scorched more than 20,000 acres and destroyed more than 130 structures.
At a Tuesday news conference, Gov. Gavin Newsom grimly noted that the Franklin fire proved that “fire season is not a season — it’s year-round in the state of California.”
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