The Thomas fire earned its place in history Friday when it reached 273,400 acres in its 19-day run from Santa Paula north toward Santa Barbara and east to Fillmore.
Ventura County's fire outpaced the Cedar fire in San Diego County, which stretched 273,246 acres in 2003, and Thomas isn't done yet. The blaze is at 65% containment as of Friday night, according to Cal Fire.
Still, the focus of Friday's efforts on the Thomas fire revolved around getting control lines around the blaze to increase containment numbers and continuing a controlled burn in Los Padres National Forest.
The controlled burn was occurring in the Rose Valley area of the forest, said Capt. Brandon Vaccaro, an information officer assigned to the incident.
“Rose Valley is kind of the end of the burn,” Vaccaro said. The threat of the blaze was winding down as it continued to spread away from communities. On Thursday, all mandatory evacuation orders associated with the incident were lifted. The American Red Cross evacuation shelter at the Ventura County Fairgrounds was to close at 3 p.m. PT Friday.
The shelter was set up soon after the fire broke out north of Santa Paula on Dec. 4. On its first night, flames raced west toward Ventura, where much of the damage was reported.
The blaze has destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including 775 single-family homes.
Two people have died as a result of the Thomas fire.
Virginia Pesola, 70, died as she was trying to evacuate her Santa Paula home.
Cal Fire engineer Cory Iverson, 32, of San Diego, died Dec. 14 fighting the fire on the eastern side near Fillmore. He leaves behind his wife Ashley and 2-year-old daughter Evie. The couple is expecting their second child.
Iverson's memorial service is planned for 10 a.m. Saturday at The Rock Church in San Diego. The service will be live streamed at http://www.sdrock.com/iverson.
Low humidity levels and extremely dry brush from years of drought contributed to the fire's growth and hampered the firefight. And the consistent appearance of strong winds pushed the fire in different directions.
Fortunately, the National Weather Service in Oxnard reported no winds in the forecast.
Since the weather is being “cooperative,” there is a good opportunity for crews to increase containment numbers by strengthening the line around the fire, Vaccaro said.
The blaze has burned in both Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Recently, that meant that when Santa Ana winds were done blowing through Ventura County, sundowner winds would pick up in Santa Barbara County.
There were many areas of the fire where crews were still building control lines on Friday. They included the area north of Camino Cielo, where crews were trying to tie the blaze into the footprint of the Zaca fire, which burned in 2007, Cal Fire reported.
Crews were also working on containment east of Rose Valley, moving toward the boundary with the Sespe Wilderness, Cal Fire reported.
However, enough progress has been made for the incident to get a new management team to let the two previous teams get some rest. The switch was expected to be made at 6 p.m. Friday, Vaccaro said.
One of the previous management teams was from Cal Fire, which is leaving partly because the “bulk of the work for state land has been completed,” Vaccaro said.
“All of their property and responsibility area has been pretty much mitigated,” Vaccaro said.
But Cal Fire will continue to have firefighters on the line, he said.
Vaccaro said there are questions coming in about what the transition means in terms of the fire, but he said the mission won't change. It's just a new group of people arriving to relieve the teams that have been working the incident for some time, Vaccaro said.
The new team will represent multiple agencies, including the Ventura County Fire Department.
