Winds howled in the mountains and canyons of Los Angeles County on Friday as emergency officials there and across the state braced for weather conditions that had raised the risk of fires to critical levels.
Several fires have cropped up in the last two days as strong Santa Ana winds combined with dry air and hot temperatures to create especially combustible conditions that were forecast to last into Saturday. Most were quickly contained.
On Friday firefighters began to gain control of one of the most concerning, the Bryson fire, which was burning through dry brush in the Santa Monica Mountains north of Malibu, Calif. The Bryson fire ignited late Thursday afternoon and quickly spread to more than 100 acres and forced evacuations. Late Friday morning, about 12,000 people were under evacuation warnings, according to a New York Times analysis.
Friday was delivering the hottest temperatures and strongest winds of the week, with highs in the 90s and winds up to 50 miles per hour in the valleys and up to 90 m.p.h. in the mountains.
“The winds are still ramping up,” Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, said Friday morning.
Any new fires that start on Friday could “get really big, really fast,” he said.
Much of Los Angeles County and neighboring Ventura County remained under a red flag warning through Saturday, and mountainous areas of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties were under warnings through Friday evening. The warnings mean that experts are worried that fires could start more easily and spread quickly if they do.
Southern California Edison preemptively cut power to over 100,000 homes and businesses to try to reduce the risk that power lines knocked over by winds could send sparks flying.
Leaders in Los Angeles on Friday morning tried to reassure skittish residents of the county’s vast, hilly areas most prone to fires that they are ready for any blazes that might ignite, while also urging residents to stay vigilant.
“We know the uncertainty that comes with these fires, which is why it’s important for us to look out for one another and to stay prepared,” Lindsey Horvath, a Los Angeles County supervisor, said in a news conference on Friday.
“Know your zone, sign up for alerts, have your go bag ready, and if you’re told to evacuate, do so immediately,” she said.
More than 400 firefighters have been sent to battle the Bryson fire, which was about 17 percent contained as of Friday morning.
“Great progress was made by firefighters overnight,” said Anthony Marrone, the Los Angeles County fire chief.
Mr. Marrone said that no structures had been destroyed or damaged so far.
Residents of the remote canyon areas near the fire were ordered to evacuate, while other residents were under warnings. Nearby parks, roads and the Getty Villa, a museum perched above the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, were all closed preemptively.
California has had fewer fires this year, with only 300,000 acres burning since Jan. 1, compared with the over one million acres that fires would have typically burned by mid-October.
For Angelenos, Friday’s conditions called to mind the ones that helped lead to the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire last year, which together killed dozens of people and burned thousands of homes. Many residents who were displaced in Malibu and in the nearby Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles still haven’t returned. In the aftermath of those catastrophes, numerous reports found that the county and city were ill-prepared for wildfires of that magnitude.
This week, Los Angeles leaders — including Mayor Karen Bass, whose reputation never fully recovered after she was out of the country when the Palisades fire ignited — have emphasized that firefighters and equipment have already been sent out to high-risk areas, even if there is no active fire.
The Los Angeles County sheriff, Robert Luna, on Friday morning warned would-be burglars that deputies would be on the streets of the evacuated areas and that the department was adding extra patrols.
“If you think you’re going to come in and take advantage of these poor folks who have been asked to evacuate or don’t have power,” he said, they would most likely encounter officers.
Several other fires ignited on Thursday as winds spread across Southern California and up and down the Sierra Nevada Range.
At Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base north of San Diego, the Henderson fire started Thursday afternoon and ballooned to more than 1,400 acres. As of Friday morning, it had not been contained.
The winds were strong in San Diego County, too, but the area was not under a red flag warning because rain from the remnants of a far-off tropical storm recently soaked the ground enough to dampen the risk of fires this week. Instead, high wind warnings were in effect there and in the surrounding areas, including Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange Counties.
The windy weather spread east from Southern California into the Southwestern United States, across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where high wind warnings and advisories were also in effect. These winds were generated by a cold storm that spread into the Southern Plains and Mexico overnight.
“The front that moved into Mexico helped amplify the winds in Southern California,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center, an arm of the Weather Service.
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