The Airport Fire expanded to nearly 20,000 acres by 7:51 p.m. on Tuesday, according to CalFire’s website.
It was officially declared a county emergency earlier that morning, with leaders of Orange County’s emergency response team warning the fire was headed toward the county canyons.
The fire was at 0% containment as of Tuesday afternoon and “continues to grow,” according to officials.
The Airport Fire was nearing Lake Elsinore in Riverside County on Tuesday evening, according to the CalFire website.
Michelle Anderson, director of the sheriff’s department emergency management division, announced evacuation warnings for the Silverado and Modjeska Canyons at the OC Board of Supervisors meeting board meeting on Tuesday morning.
“It’s shifting toward the canyons at this time,” Anderson told county supervisors just before noon on Tuesday. “We can’t really predict where the wind is going to go next.”
By the afternoon, OC Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy said that while the fire hasn’t swept through the canyons yet, that could change with the wind.
“We’ve got a significant dead fuel load in our Southern California mountains,” Fennessy said at a 4 p.m. Tuesday news conference.
He also noted the fire has jumped Ortega Highway and is currently burning toward Decker Canyon in Riverside County.
Fennessy added that there were 1,000 firefighters battling the blaze Tuesday afternoon.
“We got more than 1,000 firefighters assigned and likely equally as much on order. One of the challenges we’re having is competition with other large fires in Southern California,” Fennessy said, referencing the Line Fire in San Bernardino County and the Bridge Fire in Los Angeles County.
“So all of these fires are drawing down on the limited resources available to us,” Fennessy said.
CalFire Battalion Chief Todd Hopkins said officials in Riverside County are concerned winds could propel the fire east in what he called “the Elsinore effect.”
“You will have up canyon winds that are normal during the day then around two, three o’clock in the afternoon, the winds usually will become a down canyon wind in Lake Elsinore,” Hopkins said.
Fennessy echoed similar concerns about winds shifting the fire, saying it creates a challenging situation in the steep hills.
“We did move resources this morning into Modjeska Canyon and into Silverado Canyons … although it (the fire) was backing, we’re cognizant of the fact that the wind can change anytime and blow the fire down into those heavily inhabited communities,” Fennessy said.
Earlier in the day, the OC Fire Authority announced an evacuation warning for portions of Coto de Caza.
Officials already called for mandatory evacuations in parts of Rancho Santa Margarita’s Robinson Ranch Monday, along with evacuation orders for homes in the Trabuco Highlands Homeowners Association and the Trabuco Highland Apartment Complex.
Click here for a link to the evacuation map.
Officials have also closed many of the roads leading up to the canyons including all of Ortega Highway and Caspers Wilderness Park, which are both under evacuation orders as of Tuesday afternoon.
The Airport Fire began as a small vegetation fire Monday afternoon and grew to 1,900 acres by 6:30 p.m. and continued growing to 5,432 acres by 10 p.m. that night.
[Read: Orange County Firefighters Battle 8,500-Acre Wildfire in Trabuco]
By 6 a.m. Tuesday, the blaze spread to 8,510 – and continued growing until it hit roughly 19,028 acres by Tuesday afternoon.
At Monday night’s news conference, OCFA Deputy Chief of Operation TJ McGovern said OC Public Works staff accidentally started the fire Monday afternoon when a spark from heavy equipment happened as they were placing boulders to block off vegetation on Trabuco Creek road.
McGovern said by morning “we’re hoping to get some small number out on the containment,” which was 0% on Monday night.
According to a Tuesday morning situation report from CalFire, the fire was 0% contained.
Evacuation centers offering a safe place to stay and meals run by the American Red Cross are open at the Bell Tower Regional Community Center in Rancho Santa Margarita and Santiago High School in Corona.
Mission Viejo Animal Services has set up a meet and reunite area at the Ralphs parking lot at 31481 Santa Margarita Parkway for evacuated residents to get their pets back, and OC Animal Care in Tustin is able to shelter pets.
A large animal shelter has been set up at the OC Fairgrounds.
Orange County isn’t alone in battling a wildfire.
San Bernardino County is grappling with a roughly 23,000-acre fire as of Monday afternoon. There’s a host of mandatory evacuations for residents living near the wildfire.
Officials are also dealing with a roughly 900-acre fire near Camp Pendleton.
“We’ve been watching the fires in Northern California burn for the last couple years,” said Newport Beach Fire Chief Jeff Boyles at the OC Board of Supervisors’ meeting. “We’re being flanked right now … it’s Southern California’s turn, the Santa Ana winds haven’t even started yet.”
The Airport Fire – along with fires in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties – were growing as a brutal Southern California heat wave was winding down Tuesday.
Fennessy, the OC Fire Authority chief, said the previous drought, combined with the past two wet winters and the heatwave created a tinderbox of sorts for wildfires.
“People believe just because we got the rain that we did the last couple years that we would not have the fires we’re experiencing now. And what I try to do is remind people is that we went through many years of drought,” Fennessy said.
He added that there’s lots of dead plants from the previous drought hidden in the vegetation grown from recent rainy winters.
“We have considerable dead vegetation. Now that we’ve had months of hot weather, we’ve just experienced – what – four or five days of extremely hot weather, that live vegetation is dead. And we are seeing the results of that fuel load.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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