The day after the “Easy-Fire” wildfire in Simi Valley near Los Angeles scorched a homeless settlement on Wednesday morning, investigators are interrogating the inhabitants to find out how the fire started.
The 2.5-square-mile area encompassing the communities of Simi Valley and Moorpark forced about 7,000 homes, or around 26,000 people, home-owners, homeless people and wheelchair users alike to flee their homes, authorities said.
“Fire,” shouted Joe Lautman, who lived in one of the shelters at the homeless encampment near West Easy Street in Simi Valley, northeast of Los Angeles at about 6 a.m., the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
The 20-or-so residents of the camp did not have much time to pick up and save their belongings because the blaze was already only 100 yards away.
“I saw a six-feet-tall oak tree, and the flames were higher than the tree,” Lautman said.
“You just grab whatever you can and run,” his neighbor Bobby Green said.
No casualties were reported, though a woman named “Gypsy” was still lost.
“No one has seen her since the fire started,” Lautman said. “We worry about her.”
At noon, a dozen residents were still waiting for permission to return to the encampment, or what was left of it.
Lautman said his bikes were incinerated, and his tent was “toasted.”
“Your propane stove went, “Boom!” Green added.
From about 9 a.m., investigators with the Fire Department started questioning the residents of the Easy Street encampment for clues to who or what might have started the fire.
“They can’t blame it on us,” Latman said, indicating that they had hardly time to get away from the fire and save their lives.
So far, no results from the investigation have been reported.
The fire nearly missed the uphill Ronald Reagan Presidential Library protected in part by a buffer zone chewed by goats.
The onslaught came as both ends of the state struggled with blazes, dangerously windy weather, and deliberate blackouts.
The brush fire near the Reagan library erupted before dawn between the cities of Simi Valley and Moorpark, north of Los Angeles, and exploded to more than 1,300 acres, Ventura County officials said.
Library spokeswoman Melissa Giller said around midmorning that the hilltop museum in Simi Valley was not damaged. She said that the flames came within about 30 yards of the property. It was protected by aircraft dropping water and by a firebreak, a zone along the perimeter that had been cleared of brush by goats.
Hundreds of goats are brought in each year to eat away vegetation that could fuel wildfires on the 300-acre grounds, Giller said. Reagan and his wife, Nancy, are buried next to each other on a hillside in the library grounds.
The National Weather Service issued an extreme red flag warning for high winds for much of Southern California through Thursday evening, with some gusts expected to reach 80 mph. It could be the strongest bout of winds in years.
Associated Press contributed to this report
