hillside

With intense offshore winds and extremely dry brush, the blaze spread quickly and, by the afternoon, had ripped through hillside neighborhoods near Camarillo.

Their corner of Ventura County was battered by powerful Santa Ana winds every fall, and those gusts stoked fires that came close but never swept into their hillside community.

On Friday morning, a pair of sheriff’s deputies scrambled up a hillside in Camarillo Heights after residents noticed smoke billowing out of dense brush.

The hillside around Robert Dickran’s home in Camarillo Heights was dotted with burnt cacti and charred brush, showing just how close the fire came to his home.

That’s when the 60 mph winds whipped through the hillside neighborhood and the fire appeared on a nearby ridgeline.