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Evacuations Continue As Major Fire Burns Near Los Angeles

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/RYAN BABROFF
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/RYAN BABROFF

What began as a half-acre blaze Friday afternoon has turned into a major fire in the Santa Clarita Valley, near Los Angeles, scorching more than 33,000 acres as of Sunday evening.

A maker at the entrance of the Angeles National Forest burns on Saturday, July 23, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ryan Babroff
A maker at the entrance of the Angeles National Forest burns on Saturday, July 23, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ryan Babroff

Winds of up to 20 miles per hour, as well as hillsides carpeted with dry brush from years of drought, helped fuel the fire’s rapid growth, which as of Monday morning is only ten percent contained. Currently, close to 1,500 residents have been forced to evacuate their homes.

According to the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the fire has claimed 18 structures; a body was also found near the fire and has since been declared a fire-related fatality. Almost 3,000 firefighters are battling the blaze, aided by more than 350 fire engines and 26 helicopters.

Firefighters hose down the remains of a burned home in Sand Canyon area near Santa Clarita, Calif., on Sunday, July 24, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Matt Hartman
Firefighters hose down the remains of a burned home in Sand Canyon area near Santa Clarita, Calif., on Sunday, July 24, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Matt Hartman

In a press conference Saturday, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich pointed to “excessive heat, low humidity, extreme dry fuels that have not burned for several decades,” as reasons for the fire’s rapid growth. Despite experiencing three major fires in the past decade, some vegetation in Sand Canyon has not burned for 60 years; that dry fuel helped the fire spread rapidly once it reached the hills of the canyon.

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“We’ve never seen a fire come into Sand Canyon like that,” John Tripp, a Los Angeles County deputy fire chief, said at the press conference.

A wildfire burns close to a home near Sand Caynon and Placerita Caynon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Saturday, July 23, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ryan Babroff
A wildfire burns close to a home near Sand Caynon and Placerita Caynon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Saturday, July 23, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ryan Babroff

The Sand Canyon fire is one of a handful of wildfires that have burned in the Los Angeles area this summer — earlier blazes in Calabasas, Duarte, and Stevenson Ranch all burned thousands of acres, an exponential increase from what might be seen in a typical fire season, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We are in July,” Tipp told the Los Angeles Times. “We’ve never had four major fires within six weeks in June and July.”

Studies have linked unusually long fire seasons to global warming, both on a regional and global scale. And while the length of a fire season doesn’t necessarily directly mirror the number of fires in a given season, it does lengthen the potential for fires to spark more readily in areas with dry fuel, like in California, which has seen five years of sustained drought.

An increase in wildfire activity isn’t just bad for public safety or air quality — it also costs a lot of money. In the last decade, the U.S. government spent an average of $1.13 billion annually on fire suppression — and one study estimated that, as climate change exacerbates wildfires, fires could cost the United State as much as $62.5 billion annually by 2050.