A new blaze known as the Hillside fire broke out in the middle of the night, forcing residents to flee as strong winds drove the flames.
Right Now
A fast-moving fire is spreading in San Bernardino, burning homes in its path.
Sign up herefor our California Today newsletter.
Video
Firefighters got the call about a brush fire near Highway 18 shortly after 1 a.m. local time, said Chris Prater, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department. Strong winds have pushed the blaze into northern San Bernardino.
Homeowners in the area saw orange flames lighting up the hills around the northern edges of the city in the early morning hours and then cascading down to threaten neighborhoods to the west of Highway 18. Hundreds of homes there have been evacuated.
The highway, which connects from San Bernardino to the mountains north of the city, was also closed because of the fire,according the California Highway Patrol.
“It’s very fast-moving,” Prager said of the blaze, known as the Hillside fire. “We do have very strong winds coming out of the north-northeast, facilitating the fire spread.”
Another blaze, the Old Water fire, swept through the area last week. This week, dry conditions and low humidity were making the Hillside fire difficult to fight, Mr. Prater said. “We’ve had these winds for the past few weeks, and it’s dried out the fields.”
Another fire in Jurupa Valley, just southwest of San Bernardino, grew to cover 75 acres on Thursday morning, damaged at least two residential structures and prompted evacuations, according to theRiverside County Fire Department.
Firefighters battling the Kincade fire are optimistic.
Firefighters in Northern California believe they have “turned the corner” in battling the Kincade fire and are expecting more good news on Thursday and in coming days.
At a Wednesday night news conference, the authorities listed several positive signs: The fire was 45 percent contained, up from 30 percent on Wednesday morning. Air quality was improving. Strong, gusty winds had subsided. And most of the roughly 190, 000 residents who were evacuated had been cleared to return to their homes.
“We believe that most of the threat is now in our rearview mirror, and we are moving forward here,” said Mark Essick, the Sonoma County sheriff
The fire burned 76, 825 acres, destroyed 266 structures and damaged 47 others as of Wednesday night. More than 4, 200 firefighting personnel were still on the scene, some of whom worked through the night. The authorities cautioned that despite the good news, the fire could still behave unpredictably, as humidity remained low and there was no rain in the forecast.
But Jonathan Cox, a division chief with Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, said firefighters were also shifting their focus away from the front lines and toward “secondary hazards,” including pockets of embers and trees in danger of falling.
In Southern California, a different picture emerged. A fast-moving brush fire that began early Wednesday – and burned its way 100 yards from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum – was still raging.
As of Wednesday night, that fire, known as the Easy fire, was 5 percent contained and threatened 7 , 000 structures.
A newstate web portalincludes links to updates on fire status, evacuation zones, power outages, shelters and housing, road conditions and other information related to the fires, compiled by state agencies like Cal Fire and Caltrans and by utility companies.
Some Sonoma County residents returned home.
On Wednesday, officials at Cal Fire lifted some mandatory evacuation orders around the Kincade fire, allowing thousands of people to return to their homes.
Two of those places were the communities of Windsor and Healdsburg, with a combined population of about 40, 000 people, where evacuation orders were downgraded from mandatory to voluntary.
Maricela Garcia , 29 , was among those who rushed back home. She is 35 weeks pregnant and had fled on Saturday with her 5-year-old son, her husband, a few changes of clothes and a pillow.
They had stayed in three places since. Her son, Nathaniel, has not had school all week. Her husband, Francisco, 34, has missed a week of wages at his construction job. On Tuesday, she started feeling extremely fatigued, and almost had Francisco take her to the hospital.
She is ready for things to get back to normal , she said outside her house on a tree-lined block. “I’m just glad we have a home to come back to,” she said. They still have no power, and the refrigerator is full of food gone bad. But she said she could not be mad at officials for evacuating them. “They were just trying to keep everybody safe.”
Elsewhere in Windsor late Wednesday, the traffic lights were still out, but people were beginning to stream back in, their pickup trucks and sedans loaded with suitcases and pets. On one corner, a cluster of people stood on the road with a large banner that read “Welcome home Windsor residents.” They jumped up and down and flashed thumbs-up signs as their neighbors honked their horns.
Maps show where the fires are burning now .
We’re continuing to update our page of maps showing the extent of the fires, power outages and evacuation zones.
Santa Ana winds drive flames and imperil crews.
The winds known as the Santa Anas –the defining antagonist of the fire season– loom large over the collective psyche of Southern California, where many residents call them devil winds. Forecasters said they would be blowing hard again on Thursday, after whipping up to near-hurricane strength on Wednesday and making the Easy fire in Ventura County uncontainable.
Once the winds reach a certain strength, there is little that fire crews can do to halt a fire, said Brian McGrath, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department. “We can’t get in front of it, because it puts us in harm’s way,” he said.
On the hillsides near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, threatened by the Easy fire, the winds made it a challenge even to walk – slowly, hunched over, both hands holding your hat. Flags snapped, tree branches bent and cracked, and a portable sign toppled over.
Though the Santa Anas blow nearly every year, they have been especially strong lately, and many residents said they felt different. With the effects of climate change combined with a fierce fire season, the winds now seem more ominous.
Robert Santos, a meteorologist for Spectrum News 1, a local cable channel, said big temperature drops in the mountains and high desert country inland produce masses of cold, heavy air that push out like the opening of a freezer, producing strong gusts of dry wind downhill toward the ocean.
Strong seasonal winds have also created problems in Northern California, fanning the flames of the Kincade fire and others and prompting utility companies to shut off electric power over wide areas in the hope of avoiding new blazes started by wind-damaged lines and equipment.
The National Weather Service has posted rare “extreme red flag warnings”for much of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties through 6 pm Thursday, saying the winds could cause “extreme fire behavior.”
Wind conditions in Northern California, where red-flag warnings expired in most areas on Wednesday evening, were expected to be much less severe on Thursday. But the weather threatened to throw firefighters battling the Kincade fire another curve overnight:temperatures well below freezing.
Video
Kyle Grillot for The New York Times
Reporting was contributed by Julie Turkewitz in Windsor, Calif., Tim Arango in Simi Valley, Calif., And Mihir Zaveri and Jacey Fortin in New York.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings