Linda Elmo was waiting outside Padre Serra Parish in Camarillo for Ventura County emergency personnel to bring a wheelchair for her to get into the evacuation center amid the ferocious Mountain fire.
The 75-year-old had watched as the winds picked up that morning and was listening to the news, but she didn’t receive notice about a wildfire evacuation until a firefighter knocked on the door and told her and her husband to “go, go, go!’”
“It happened so fast,” Elmo said. The blaze “was in this canyon by the house in the backyard.”
The Mountain fire exploded into Moorpark and Camarillo on Wednesday fueled by dangerously high wind and dry conditions. The fire swept into hillside neighborhoods, forcing residents to flee and burning numerous homes. There were reports of some people trapped.
The high winds mean retardant-dropping airplanes were initially unable to aid in the firefighting effort, the department said. The fire had hopped the 118 Freeway and was marching into Camarillo Heights. As a result, the California Highway Patrol closed the freeway between Oxnard and Camarillo.
The fire started amid a Santa Ana wind event that was generating 70- to 80-mph wind gusts in some parts of Los Angeles County on Wednesday, triggering power outages, traffic concerns and warnings of fire risk.
There were dramatic moments through the morning and afternoon.
Ventura County sheriff’s deputies rushed older Moorpark residents in wheelchairs down steep driveways and out of homes, amid orange haze and wind gusts, Key News Network video showed.
Deputies lifted those who could not walk into police cars and rushed them away from encroaching flames just coming into view.
Elmo said she had left half of the medication that she needed at home.
“I don’t have the charges for my oxygen,” she added. Elmo uses an Inogen portable oxygen machine. “I’ll deal with it,” she said.
She had a friend trying to pick up more medicine at the pharmacy for her but said she hoped the Red Cross might also have some of the medication she needed.
Emilia Lois said the day had been “kind of a blur.” Her home sits on Ridgecrest Lane, close to the fire’s origin.
The 45-year-old mother of two evacuated around 9:30 a.m. Her husband was away on business. She said she watched as wildfire smoke billowed down her street.
After getting an alert on her phone, Lois rushed to pack some belongings and pick up her children, 11 and 14 years old, from school — which, not long after, was canceled.
“They know what’s happening, and they’re pretty upset,” she said, “but I keep trying to remind them that we’re alive, we’re here, we are safe.”
Karen Cihigoyenetche, 81, and her husband Raymond, 92, were warned about the fire from their cable man, who begged them to leave the house. “Our cable man is actually the rescuer here,” she said.
Cihigoyenetche didn’t get a notification on her phone, she said: “I’m not literate in the phone business.”
She jumped into action, trying to call all her senior neighbors. She grabbed her emergency bag packed with cash, extra clothes and medicine.
“The traffic was really bad, and a lot of emergency vehicles trying to get through the traffic, unbelievable,” Cihigoyenetche said. The three mile drive from her home to parish that would normally only be 15 minutes took them an hour. She didn’t know where to go when she left.
She drove one direction before realizing she was heading into the wind — and the fire. “We were stopped and found somebody that told us we have to come [to the parish],” she said. “It was an unbelievable mess.”
As the sun sank behind the thick smoke just beyond the parish, the Red Cross told evacuees they should expect to stay the night.
CaroleAnn Higa thought there might be cots, or she could push two chairs together.
Higa and a roommate had escaped their home to the roar of helicopters overhead. She stuffed some clothes and her respirator into her purse and her roommate loaded her oxygen tank into the car. Higa, 77, has asthma and COPD.
When she exited the house, she said the smoke was so thick she could barely see across the street.
“You can’t breathe,” she said. “It hits your chest and you’re gasping for air.” At the parish, emergency personnel ushered her to a medical team.
“If the nurse hadn’t helped me, I wouldn’t have made it,” she said.
