Smoke rose over Avalon on Thursday.
Firefighters struggled early today to prevent a wildfire from reaching homes on the edge of Santa Catalina Island’s main town, as residents and visitors fled the resort island off the Southern California coast.
At least 160 firefighters, aided by four water-dropping helicopters and three retardant-dropping air tankers, battled flames through most of Thursday. The helicopters flew into the night and were back in the air at dawn today.
Dozens of fire engines from as far away as Fresno arrived through the night aboard giant military hovercraft from the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton. The high-speed hovercraft can carry 60 tons of cargo over land or water, and are often used by the military on humanitarian missions.
The blaze broke out Thursday afternoon on the island, which is more than 20 miles off the coast. Flames threatened the city limits of Avalon, where hundreds of people lined up at the harbor Thursday night to board ferries back to the mainland. Many covered their faces with towels and bandanas as ashes fell around them.
A few homes on the island were burned, but firefighters worked to protect other properties late into the night, said Steven Hoefs, the chief of the Avalon fire department. Some 1,200 homes were under voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders.
“We’re hanging in for now,” Chief Hoefs said.
The blaze, which began five miles east of the island’s airport, grew to cover 4,000 acres, feeding on dry brush and scrub as winds steadily blew throughout the day and into the night on Thursday. Winds later calmed and the air grew more humid, although the threat of fire remained.
An orange inferno loomed behind the quaint crescent-shaped harbor, the landmark 1929 Catalina Casino, and the homes, restaurants and tiny hotels clinging to slopes above the Avalon waterfront.
A commercial building and several warehouses burned, and 175 utility customers lost electricity when power poles caught on fire.
Overnight, Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters were ferrying in firefighters, 32 at a time. Crews were being positioned at the city’s edge to protect homes.
“We’re on defense mode for now,” Chief Hoefs said.
In Avalon, authorities used a bullhorn to urge people to evacuate the city and head to the beach. Visitors to the island were directed to the historic Art Deco-style Casino building until it lost power, while residents were sent to another site along the harbor.
The Catalina Express ferry service added several night departures of 400-passenger vessels from Avalon. Hundreds of residents and visitors boarded the ferries to reach the mainland.
A family of eight said they had just enough time to pack some clothes and personal papers before fleeing.
“I’m scared,” said Angelica Romero, 30, holding her 7-month-old daughter. “But what’s important is I have my children. The rest doesn’t matter.”
At the mainland port of Long Beach, Kathy Troeger, a Santa Catalina resident, arrived by ferry with her three children and a friend’s daughter. Her husband, a fire captain, stayed behind to help fight the blaze.
“It was like a nightmare when we left,” she said. “You couldn’t breathe, and ash was falling like snow.”
An evacuation center was set up at Cabrillo High School, where about 85 people had checked in, according to the Red Cross.
Santa Catalina has been left parched by the same lack of rainfall that has made the Southern California mainland particularly susceptible to wildfires, like the one in Griffith Park in Los Angeles earlier this week.
Firefighters were still working there today to surround what remained of the fire, which briefly chased people from adjacent homes and threatened the park’s landmark observatory and its zoo.
Los Angeles officials had expected the Griffith Park fire to be fully contained by Thursday, two days after it peaked, and no visible flames remained, but fire crews were still building containment lines around the fire’s perimeter late into the night.
Only 2 inches of rain have fallen on Santa Catalina since January.
The island is long and fairly narrow, covering a total of 76 square miles of land area, most of it owned and kept as a preserve by the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy. various wildlife. The populated areas are served by helicopters and ferry boats from Los Angeles, Long Beach and other mainland harbors.
Avalon, the main town, has a year-round population of 3,200, but swells to more than 10,000 on weekends and in the summer, according to the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
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