100-acre Camarillo brush fire snarls traffic on 101 Freeway
A brush fire along the 101 Freeway in Camarillo has spread to 100 acres and is still growing, fire officials said.
The Ventura County Fire Department said more than 200 firefighters were at or on the way to the fire, which began near the Conejo Grade of the freeway about 6:30 a.m. At 8:15 a.m., officials said additional air resources were being brought in as the fire was uncontained.
“Firefighters are working in steep, rocky terrain to stop the spread of the fire,” according to a Ventura County Fire update.
At least one southbound lane of the freeway was closed. The Fire Department said Old Conejo Road was open only to residents.
Ventura and L.A. counties remained under a red-flag warning through Friday night, with humidity expected to be extremely low and hot winds blasting north across the region at speeds upward of 40 mph in the valleys and coasts and 70 mph in the mountains.
The National Weather Service warned of an “extreme” fire danger in counties from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara on Thursday and Friday. A red-flag warning was issued for L.A. and Ventura counties because of a “combination of moderate to strong Santa Ana winds, hot temperatures, very low humidities and unusually dry fuels.”
The weather is fanning the Summit fire in Riverside County, which scorched about 3,000 acres since Wednesday afternoon. Two firefighters have been injured and one building damaged in that fire.
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Kate Mather covered crime, policing and breaking news across Southern California before leaving The Times in 2018 to attend law school. A native of Lawrence, Kan., she studied journalism at USC before first joining The Times in 2011. Mather was part of the team of reporters that received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, as well as the team that was a Pulitzer finalist for its reporting on a deadly 2014 rampage in Isla Vista, Calif.