Update: The Lake Fire grew on Sunday to the second biggest of the season. A more recent report can be found here.
Evacuations have been called for a wildfire burning since Friday afternoon in a rugged area of Santa Barbara County.
The Lake Fire was reported around 4 p.m. Friday, July 5, near Zaca Lake, in the Los Padres National Forest. By Saturday night it was at 13,264 acres (20.7 square miles) with 0% containment, said the U.S. Forest Service’s fire management team.It’s already California’s fifth-biggest fire of the season.
Late Saturday, an evacuation order was issued for a 5-mile stretch of Figueroa Mountain Road and the Sawmill Basin/Figueroa Campground area.
The map above shows the approximate fire perimeter as a black line and the evacuation zones in red. For more evacuation details and latest updates, see Santa Barbara County’s emergency map.
The fire’s western edge was within a mile of the former Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch, as well as several prominent wineries in the Foxen Canyon area.
Its cause is under investigation.
In 2007, the same area was burned by the Zaca Fire, which at that time was the second largest wildfire in California’s recorded history. It was started on July 4 by sparks from a grinding tool and wasn’t fully contained until Sept. 4; hot spots continued to burn until the last days of October. The final tally was 240,207 acres (375 square miles). Forty-three people were injured in the firefighting.
