By The Signal Editorial Board
Well, we dodged a bullet.
Even as communities in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena are still reeling from the devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires, beginning a recovery process that will be measured not in days or weeks but in years, a new fire raged into the hills between Saugus and Castaic on Wednesday, threatening to inflict similar devastation here, in the largely unscathed Santa Clarita Valley.
As the fire exploded in size from an initial report of about 50 acres to multiple thousands of acres just in its first few hours, the skies above the northern SCV looked bleak, and so did the situation. Some 30,000 people were ordered to evacuate, mostly in Castaic, and another 20,000 were told to pack up their “go bags” and be ready, just in case things went south. Literally.
The firefight was on.
And, we are glad — and thankful — to say this fight was a stirring success. As quickly as the fire leaped to burn more than 10,000 acres, it was reduced to a minimal threat within a short 24-hour span, with nary a structure lost.
It’s something of a cliche to thank all of the first responders for keeping our lives and property safe — firefighters from L.A. County, the Angeles National Forest and multiple other departments offering aid, as well as law enforcement officers from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol and even the National Guard.
But we don’t care if it’s a cliche: Thank you. All of you. Every last one of you. And we mean it.
So, what’s to explain the dramatic difference between our outcome here, with the Hughes Fire, and the blazes that destroyed thousands of homes and took dozens of lives just to the south of our beloved SCV?
There’s been plenty of finger-pointing about the response and preparation miscues that potentially contributed to the more tragic outcomes to the south, and certainly the city of Los Angeles has much work to do to get its house in order.
Regardless, we feel grateful for what did go right here, whether it was proper planning and preparation by ANF and L.A. County Fire, the availability of resources and the effective deployment of them, or more favorable circumstances than those that afflicted the Palisades and Altadena — the winds were high here on Wednesday and Thursday, but not to the same extent as they were during the earlier L.A. blazes.
And, maybe even some lessons learned from those firefights were applied to this one.
The upshot for our community was, as frightening as those first 12 hours were, thanks to speedy deployment of 4,000 firefighters and multiple aircraft from multiple agencies near and far, by the wee hours of Thursday morning they actually released the remaining night-flying helicopters because, by then, no water drops were needed.
This could have been so much worse. And we extend our sincere, heartfelt thanks to everyone who had a hand in making sure it wasn’t.
