"When the sundowners surface in that area and the fire starts running down slopes, you are not going to stop it," Mark Brown, an operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), told reporters at a news briefing on Saturday morning.
"And we are not going to stand in front of it and put firefighters in untenable situations," he added.
A sundowner is particularly dangerous during wildfire season because the air heats and dries as it descends from the mountains to the sea.
Pictures posted on Twitter showed that platoons of fire trucks awaited orders with their engines running in parking lots of public schools, churches and other designated safety zones Saturday morning.
Santa Barbara branch of Cal Fire tweeted a video at noon, showing fire engines from Portland of Oregon state provided structure protection at the historic San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, a luxury resort dated from 1893.
Montecito, a small oceanside city located between the Coastal Mountains and the Pacific seashore with about 20,000 residents, were empty since from last week the fire scorched the southern Ventura County.
The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry down-slope winds that originate inland and affect coastal Southern California in fall and winter. They are known as "devil winds" for fanning regional wildfires.
Fanned by the unusual Santa Ana this winter, the Thomas Fire has scorched about 259,000 acres, destroyed 1,000 structures and killed two people including a firefighter in Southern California since it ignited on Dec. 4.
【国际英语资讯:Fueled by winds, Californias third largest wildfire triggers new evacuations】相关文章:
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