Progress gained in fighting Thomas Fire, but containment remains at 5 percent

There’s one thing constant as the ever-growing Thomas Fire enters its fifth day on Friday — relentless winds.

Santa Ana winds continued to make the 115,000-acre fire more dangerous, spreading flames north of Ojai city limits, past La Conchita and into Santa Barbara County. Ojai Valley residents, who had been under voluntary evacuations when the fire tore through Ventura, were called to leave Wednesday night. New evacuation orders were called for the Carpinteria area when the fire crossed county line.

Read more:Ventura County fire: Here are the latest updates

New developments of the fire had authorities concerned most of Thursday, not just because of the expansion but its trajectory into dry fuel beds.

Cal Fire Capt. John Clingingsmith said the Ojai Valley and La Conchita haven’t had a history of fires.

“There’s a lot of dead fuels up there,” Clingingsmith said. “And when we have no fire history, that could be decades worth of dead slash and trees and brush and everything.”

New fire activity continued throughout the county, including in a remote area near Fillmore and Santa Paula that produced big plumes of smoke. By late Thursday, authorities said they were able to get a handle on much of the fire perimeter and make progress on mopping up problem areas.  

Strong winds, which haven’t taken a break since the fire started near Santa Paula on Monday, have limited aircraft deployment as well as the possibility of displaced residents being allowed to return soon.

Read more:Ventura County fire: How to give or find help

On Thursday morning, no planes were deployed because the winds were too strong. Later in the day, large aircraft were deployed.

Large planes aren’t able to effectively drop fire retardant during windy conditions, Clinginsmith said. It’s easier for helicopters to navigate under windy conditions to make pinpoint drops, he said.

There were 12 helicopters in operation Thursday on the Thomas Fire. The number of firefighting personnel, at 1,800 early Tuesday, had grown to 2,500 by Thursday.

But they are still not enough.

Read more:Latest road, school closures near Santa Paula fire

Officials said there’s been a lack of qualified damage-assessment teams available in recent days to quantify the number of homes destroyed by the fire. Officials announced that 439 structures had been destroyed and 85 damaged. 

Gabriela Gutierrez was among those who lost her home.

Gutierrez and her husband, along with their two young children, evacuated their home in a Santa Paula mobile home park Monday evening. The first warning was a call from the family’s baby sitter saying some people were being evacuated. Then a security guard knocked on their door encouraging them to pack essentials.

“I couldn’t believe it until I went outside and I saw flames, and there was some smoke,” she said.

The family has been staying with Gutierrez’s mother. On Tuesday, she learned their home had burned while that of some neighbors had survived. She sent a photo of their burned home to her husband and reminded him that at least they still have their lives.

“I think there are other people that need more help than me because I have a family that cares and loves me,” Gutierrez said.

On Thursday morning, Gutierrez stopped in at the Santa Paula Community Center, one of six evacuation centers set up in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. About two dozen people spent the night in the Santa Paula shelter. For days, people had been dropping off donations of water, food and clothing. Kids played cards and video games as adults rested on cots.

Kay Wilson-Bolton, a chaplain with the Ventura County Fire Department who also works with area homeless people, said the outpouring of charity means basic needs are being met. What will be needed next, she said, are places for displaced people to eat a home-cooked meal or take a shower, the things that will help them feel normal again.

“It’s a lesson on how we should hang on to things on earth very loosely,” Wilson-Bolton said. She evacuated her home Tuesday and has been sleeping at her office. Her home survived.

On Thursday, she said there’s a sense of uncertainty about what could happen next for the Santa Paula area.

“With the winds the way they are, who knows?” she said.

The unpredictability of the wind seems to be the overarching theme of this massive fire, which on Thursday moved toward Las Padres National Forest. The winds are expected to weaken but they're not going away. A red-flag fire warning, originally thought to end on Saturday, is expected to remain in place through Sunday evening. 

Mandatory evacuation orders, which stretch from Santa Paula to the Ojai Valley and up the coast, remained in place through Thursday. That Santa Anas could still pick up at any time is the reason.

“We’re keeping all mandatory evacuation orders in place because we don’t want people returning just because winds are dying down,” said Tom Kruschke, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department. “The danger is real and it exists and it’s out there.”

Officials said they are making it a priority to allow Ventura evacuees to return, but there is no timeline for that.

Kyle Uhl was able to see the destruction of his Ventura neighborhood on Thursday when he returned home to retrieve belongings.

The hillside neighborhood Ondulando was particularly hard-hit. Along Colina Vista, a sloping street with clear views to the south, more than half of the homes had been burned down to piles of ash and metal. Left standing on the burned lots were brick chimneys, water heaters and stoves.

Uhl’s home in a cul-de-sac near the top of the hill was spared. Uhl was out of town, manning a tugboat on water near San Francisco, when his wife called to tell him, “Ventura is burning!” She evacuated with 30 minutes warning.

The neighborhood was still blocked off Thursday afternoon. Uhl said he talked his way past blockades so he could grab some clothes and assess the neighborhood firsthand.

When firefighters saw him leaving his house, Uhl said they turned their truck around to question him.

He said he was glad they were keeping an eye on the neighborhood and that he told them: “I don’t know which one of you guys did it, but I want to thank you for the job you’ve done because you saved my house. Somebody did.”

Authorities closed Highway 101 in the early hours Thursday when the fire moved up the coast. The highway later opened but closed again in the afternoon because of downed power lines.

There was no Amtrak service in Ventura County with railroad tracks closed north of Ventura.

Along Highway 101, the communities of Faria Beach and La Conchita were spared the worst of the fire. In La Conchita, an abandoned structure on the east side of the close-knit neighborhood was damaged.

The fire swept through a palm tree farm near the railroad tracks in Faria Beach and burned through large equipment kept within chain-link fencing.

Authorities are shifting their focus to the Carpinteria area, parts of which are under mandatory evacuation orders. Even in neighborhoods not under the mandatory orders, authorities want the Santa Barbara County residents to have a plan and a car with a full tank of gas.

Local personnel not fighting the largest fire of Southern California were kept busy, too.

In Moorkpark, crews were called out to a small brush fire along Shekell Road. The blaze, which grew to about 2 acres, was put out by about 2:15 p.m.

Winds whipped through Oxnard in the afternoon, blowing a palm tree into power lines and sparking a fire. Three buildings along Wooley Road in the Five Points area caught fire, but a car wash fared the worst damage at minor to moderate.

Staff writers Barrett Newkirk, Megan Diskin and Christian Martinez contributed to this report.