Firefighters in California are tackling a new fire that has broken out in Ventura County.

The blaze, dubbed the Auto fire, started in the Santa Clara River bottom near North Ventura Boulevard and Auto Center Drive, on Monday evening.

Progress on the fire had been “significantly slowed” by 10:50 p.m. local time on Monday, Andrew Dowd, a spokesperson for the Ventura County Fire Department, told the Ventura County Star.

A cause for the fire has not been determined, Dowd said.

Newsweek has contacted the fire department for further information via email.

Why It Matters

The new fire came as strong winds threatened the progress made so far on huge fires in the Los Angeles area that have destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 24 people in the past week.

The Palisades fire, the largest of the fires still burning, has consumed almost 24,000 acres west of Los Angeles, and was just 14 percent contained by Monday night. The Eaton fire has burned more than 14,000 acres in the hills near Pasadena and was just 33 percent contained, while containment on the Hurst fire, which has burned almost 800 acres near Sylmar, was at 97 percent.

What To Know

Several videos posted on social media showed the spread of the fire.

One video captured from a helicopter and shared on X by ABC7 reporter Chris Cristi showed the fire moving west along the Santa Clara riverbed.

Local news station KTLA also shared a video captured from above showing how far the blaze had spread.

About 75 firefighters were working to prevent the spread of the fire, the Ventura County Fire Department wrote on X shortly before 9 p.m. local time.

An evacuation order has been issued for the Santa Clara River between the 101 Freeway and Victoria Avenue, according to an alert on the Ventura County’s emergency services website.

The alert notes that no residential structures are under evacuation.

Victoria Avenue is closed between Gonzales Road and Olivas Park Drive, the alert added.

What People Are Saying

Dowd told the Star that he did not expect the fire to threaten any structures. “Because of the size, it will be a long night of hard work to get the heat out of certain portions of this fire,” he said.

What’s Next

Firefighters are continuing to work on containing the Auto fire. It had burned about 56 acres and containment was at 0 percent, according to an update from Cal Fire at around 11:40 p.m.

Update 1/14/25, 3.30 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.

Ricki Lake, whose treasured Malibu home burned to the ground last week amid the Palisades Fire, shared on social media that three months ago, she had spoken with celebrity medium Tyler Henry, who asserted a home connected to her would be ravaged by fire and water.

“Trying to articulate this without it sounding concerning,” Henry began, bringing up an instance of fire, in an episode from his series, “Live from the Other Side” on Netflix. “I think this may have already happened. If there was a loss [of] material objects from fire and water – and water though – that’s the kind of weird distinction,” he added as Lake nodded affirmatively. “It’s two separate things.”

“So we’re gonna end up finding that there’s a story where, like, there was a house fire, or something along those lines.”

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“There was a house fire,” Lake said.

“Separate from that,” he continued. “And this might end up being a little bit more pertinent. We had like a really bad storm and our basement flooded and it got a bunch of pictures ruined and we couldn’t ever bring them back. There’s just something about watching water seepage into a place it shouldn’t and damaging things. So keeping both of those things in mind.”

Celebrity medium and TV personality Tyler Henry had a premonition about a home connected to Ricki Lake in an October episode of his Netflix show. (Gary Gershoff/Getty Images)

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“But the fire already happened?” Lake clarified, sharing that she lived in Malibu. “The fire already happened,” Henry confirmed, acknowledging the fragility of the area. “But the kind of emphasis here is for some reason water. Fire and water. We got to watch it.”

In a post to Instagram, Lake credited Henry for his premonition, saying he’d “called it,” urging people to watch the episode.

“Less than three months ago, on Oct 15th, 2024 Ross and I were on Tyler’s show and guys, he SAW the fire,” she wrote.

Ricki Lake’s Malibu oasis burned in the Palisades Fire. (Ricki Lake Instagram)

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Last week, Lake shared photos of her beautiful Malibu property to social media, alerting followers that she had lost her “dream home” in the fires.

“It’s all gone,” she wrote, beneath a series of photos of her home before the fire. “I can’t believe I am typing these words.” Lake said “a valiant and brave effort” was made by their friend to save the home, but they unfortunately did not succeed. “The place where we planned to grow old together. We never took our heavenly spot on the bluff overlooking our beloved malibu for granted, not even for one second. I shared our sunset views almost daily with all of you.”

“This loss is immeasurable. It’s the spot where we got married 3 years ago,” she said, referencing her third marriage to Ross Burningham. “I grief (sic) along with all of those suffering during this apocalyptic event. Praying for all of my neighbors, my friends, my community, the animals, the firefighters and first responders. More to share soon of how we escaped with Dolly and not much else. For now I grieve.”

Ricki Lake shared a video of what’s left of her home over the weekend. (Chris Haston/NBC via Getty Images)

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On Sunday, she shared a video showing “What’s left of our home and garden from the courtyard.” She wrote, “The Palm trees survived! I can’t believe it…. And to hear the birds chirping warms my broken heart.”

According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, there are three active fires burning in Los Angeles: the Palisades Fire (14% contained), the Eaton Fire (33% contained) and Hurst Fire (89% contained.) Over 12,300 structures have been destroyed.

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As Los Angeles battles multiple fast-moving wildfires, emergency officials have faced a nightmare situation: fire hydrants running out of water.

“How do you fight a fire with no water?” Ryan Babroff, a volunteer firefighter battling the Eaton Fire, told The Washington Post.

At some point this week, up to 20 per cent of the city’s hydrants went dry, according to LA mayor Karen Bass. And on Thursday night, firefighters had stopped tapping into hydrants at all.

“Right now, we’re not utilizing the hydrants,” Kristin M. Crowley, chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, said Thursday.

By Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom had called for an independent investigation into the hydrant issue.

“We need answers to ensure this does not happen again and we have every resource available to fight these catastrophic fires,” he wrote in a statement on X.

Critics have sounded off on the situation from near and far.

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Rachel Darvish, a resident of the scorched Pacific Palisades neighborhood, went viral after she confronted Governor Newsom over the tapped-out hydrants, insisting she would “fill up the hydrants myself.”

Meanwhile, real estate developer and former L.A. mayoral candidate Rick Caruso alleged “absolute mismanagement by the city.”

Some on the right, meanwhile, have used the shocking water shortage to attack California’s Democratic leadership and policies. Donald Trump claimed the governor’s “gross incompetence” and decision not to open up “the water main” in Northern California was to blame, while Elon Musk has argued everything from environmental protections for endangered fish to the Los Angeles Fire Department’s diversity initiatives were behind the issues with the fire response.

According to experts and government officials, the water shortage issue is much more complex.

Why is there a water shortage?

A patchwork of municipal water systems feeds L.A., drawing water from 200 different utilities. They support a system designed to handle lower-level, urban fires, not multiple large-scale wildfires descending from the hills.

“We are looking at a situation that is just completely not part of any domestic water system design,” Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, toldThe New York Times. “If this is going to be a norm, there is going to have to be some new thinking about how systems are designed.”

“It was like a worst-case scenario, but I think we should be planning for those worst-case scenarios,” Faith Kearns, a wildfire and water expert at Arizona State University, added in an interview with National Geographic. “You can’t predict everything, but also, I do think this is where we’re headed.”

Faced with a series of fires moving as fast as five football fields per minute, this system buckled.

When did fire hydrants run out?

By Wednesday, three 1 million gallon, high-elevation water tanks supplying the hard-hit Pacific Palisades went dry. High demand not only drained the tanks, and drew from water that would’ve been used to replenish them, but it also lowered pressure within the overall hydrant system, further straining the ability of firefighters to quickly get water.

“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades,” Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer at Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said at a Wednesday briefing. “We pushed the system to the extreme.”

Some of that demand would’ve been met by a 117 million-gallon reservoir complex in the Pacific Palisades, but it sat out of use for repairs as the fires in the Palisades began. Officials estimate that had the Santa Ynez Reservoir been online, it would’ve cut demand on the area’s water system from four times to three times as high as normal.

“You still would have ended up with serious drops in pressure,” former Department of Water and Power general manager Adams toldThe Los Angeles Times. “Would Santa Ynez [Reservoir] have helped? Yes, to some extent. Would it have saved the day? I don’t think so.”

Making matters worse, the high winds that helped spread the fires also temporarily prevented officials from using aerial drops of water which could’ve been pulled from the ocean or Southern California’s reservoirs, which are currently sitting above historical levels.

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And, as President Biden noted on Thursday, loss of electricity put up yet another impediment to getting water to hydrants, as blackouts impacted pumping systems.

Why did the water shortage cause electrical issues?

California Rep. Judy Chu told CNNNews Central on Friday that a FEMA administrator informed her that “they had to turn down the electricity in order to make sure that the fire wasn’t aggravated because of the electricity.”

“They need electricity in order to pump water. So, they turned that down,” she explained. “And then, at the same time, there were so many hydrants that were being used all at once. That aggravated the situation. In addition, they said, there are homes that have been devastated where the water wasn’t turned off. So, there actually are homes where the water is just pouring out and they have to go home by home to turn it off.”

Chu added that the situation is “in hand right now.”

Other fires, like the 2023 Maui fires and the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Northern California, have caused hydrants to go dry in the past, and it seems L.A. will need to go back to the drawing board if these kinds of wildfire-scale urban blazes become the new normal.

“There is a theoretical world, and maybe a world we’re entering into, where we could pay much, much more to have redundant water and power supply — because you need both [to fight fire], especially in terrains like this,” Greg Pierce, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, told LAist. “I’m not even sure that would have made a difference when it comes to these types of wildfires, but that’s possible.”

“There’s no reason to think that [the Department of Water and Power] was particularly ill-prepared, no one was talking about them being ill-prepared for wildfires,” he said. “This caught everyone off guard, as far as I know.”

As the city seeks to fight the fires and rebuild, California leaders have sharply condemned outsiders trying to score political points.

“People are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools. Families completely torn asunder. Churches burned down. And this guy wanted to politicize it,” Newsom said in response to Trump on CNN.