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A rapidly advancing fire in California has forced authorities to evacuate part of a 5,000-person prison in Los Angeles County.
He hughes fire, that erupted Wednesday afternoon in Castaic, is 0 percent contained and has already burned nearly 9,300 acres, according to Cal Fire.
Although 4,000 firefighters battled the inferno, the rapidly advancing flames forced more than 50,000 to leave the area, including nearly 500 Pitchess. detention center inmates, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna.
A sheriff watches flames climb the hill as smoke from the Hughes Fire fills the sky in Castaic, a northwest neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on Jan. 22, 2025. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
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The Pitches Detention Center has three different facilities, one of which has already been evacuated in fire officers‘ recommendation, according to Luna.
The inmates were moved to another facility on the jail campus. If those facilities are deemed unsafe, the department will be tasked with moving more than 4,500 inmates.
“The other two campuses are much better structured than the one we evacuated from,” Luna said. “We have a plan to evacuate the rest of the inmates throughout the facility, if absolutely necessary.”
A vehicle drives over a hillside engulfed in flames caused by the Hughes Fire in Castaic, California, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
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Los Angeles County Public Defenders UnionThe Los Angeles City Council and Justice LA posted on social media advocating for the evacuation of Pitchess inmates.
“We demand that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the sheriff’s department take swift action to protect the lives of the thousands of incarcerated individuals entrusted to their care,” the public defenders union wrote in a statement posted on X.
“We are deeply alarmed by the imminent risk this disaster poses to the health and safety of our customers,” the union wrote. “They should not be neglected or abandoned during this critical time.”
The popular council publicly accused officials of “waiting until the last minute,” claiming that authorities would not have enough buses to evacuate prisoners at the same time.
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The California National Guard announced that all eight MAFFS (Modular Aerial Firefighting System) aircraft in the US, including two from the state guard, were launched to fight the Hughes Fire.
The California Guard MAFFS are based at the 146th Airlift Wing, Channel Islands Air National Guard Station in Port Hueneme, while the other six aircraft were previously positioned there in response to the Palisades and Eaton.
“We will continue to closely monitor the situation and provide the federal government with whatever it needs to extinguish this fire,” Governor Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X.
