LOS ANGELES — Firefighters across California raced to tamp down major wildfires on Tuesday as another round of fierce Santa Ana winds headed to the state, where tens of thousands of people had already been driven from their homes and hundreds of thousands more were without power.
Fire crews made progress on Tuesday against the Getty fire near the Getty Museum in one of Los Angeles’ ritziest areas. The fire had consumed 656 acres by Tuesday afternoon, and containment had risen to 15 percent, fire authorities said.
The blaze appeared to have been sparked at about 1:34 a.m. Monday in the Sepulveda Pass, not far from the museum, when a tree branch that had been snapped off by intense winds struck power lines, caught fire and dropped onto a brush-covered hillside below, arson investigators for the Los Angeles City Fire Department told NBC Los Angeles.
Thanks to the progress on Tuesday, a mandatory evacuation zone in West Los Angeles shrank to cover about 7,000 structures, including homes and businesses, officials said. The evacuation zone included homes belonging to some of Southern California’s richest and most famous residents, such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James.
At least 12 homes had been destroyed, and five others had been damaged, fire officials said Tuesday afternoon.
A “remarkable and dangerous” Santa Ana wind event expected Tuesday night was forecast to make matters worse, delivering gusts of up to 70 mph in much of Southern California — and as high as 80 mph in mountain areas.
The National Weather Service said renewed fire conditions in parts of Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties would be “extremely critical,” a description it has rarely used before.
Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news
The weather service said that all of the elements of a strong Santa Ana wind event were lining up and that “most of these elements are very strong.”
“Unlike our previous events this October, this will not be a one day event,” it said.
Tinder-dry brush in the region hasn’t seen rain for months.It’s been 125 days — about four months — since the last rain fell downtown and 95 days since it rained at Los Angeles International Airport.
“Our goal today will be to increase containment as much as possible. That is our primary objective,” city Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas said. “It only takes one ember to blow downwind and start another fire.”
Gusts topping 40 mph were already raking across Northern California, where the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., or PG&E, began shutting off power to about 600,000 customers on Tuesday morning — the fourth massive round of rolling blackouts in the region in less than a month.
The utility, which provides power across much of Northern California, has used rolling blackouts in fire-prone areas where downed lines and faulty transmission towers have been known to spark wildfires, including last year’s Camp fire, the state’s deadliest, which killed 85 people.
PG&E has been turning the lights back on since Monday for some of the more than 300,000 customers whose power was cut off in the third blackout over the weekend, saying about 57 percent were back up and running on Tuesday.
Winds through Wednesday weren’t expected to be as strong as in Southern California, the National Weather Service said, but they were still likely to fuel “critical” fire conditions similar to those that occurred when the Kincade fire ignited last week north of San Francisco.
Tens of thousands of people remained under evacuation orders in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, as the Kincade fire had scorched 74,000 acres, destroyed about 60 homes and sent smoke hovering across the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a sliver of good news: No deaths had been reported, although at least two firefighters have been injured.
“This, unfortunately, is now California’s normal,” said Capt. Scott McLean of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Sixteen significant blazes were burning across the state, and firefighters were responding to an average of 170 fires a week, with of them smaller than 10 acres, McLean said.
Gov. Gavon Newsom agreed at a news conference on Tuesday that “while this is cold comfort for those who have been directly impacted,” the spate of blazes was nothing unusual.
“The fact is, the fires this year have been relatively modest compared to previous years,” Newsom said.
At an evacuation center in Napa County, Francisco Alvarado, 15, told NBC Bay Area that this was the second time in as many years that he’d had to flee his home. Two years ago, the Tubbs fire roared across the region, killing 22 people and devastating neighborhoods in the city of Santa Rosa.
“I’m pretty mad that we have to keep evacuating,” he said. “I just want to be home.”
Alex Johnson and Eric Leonard reported from Los Angeles. David K. Li reported from New York.