As Los Angeles County residents continue to struggle with the destructive aftermath of the Eaton and the Palisades fires, the Hughes Fire, which bloomed into being On Wednesday, January 22, is still only 24% contained as of Thursday afternoon, and the red-flag warnings will remain through Friday.
As for the nature of the Hughes fire itself, the Castaic-located firestorm didn’t just ignite, it seemed to explode, quickly burning more than 10,000 acres, which means it is now the third-largest wild fire to menace Southern California.
In the face of the fast moving blaze, officials issued more than 50,000 evacuation orders and warnings, causing more than 31,000 people to be evacuated on Wednesday, while remarkable firefighters and pilots continued to do the dangerous work it takes to begin to contain a Santa-Ana-driven wildfire with plenty of fuel.
Yet, there is one group of residents within the mandatory evacuation area of the Hughes fire, that could not choose to evacuate. These are the approximately 400 residents of the two Los Angeles County jail facilities located in Castaic. The other people potentially endangered by the fire who could not evacuate to safety are the LA County Sheriff’s deputies who are working in the two jails.
In a Facebook post, the LASD, and Sheriff Robert Luna, attempted to reassure family members and others that the residents of Pitchess Detention Center and the nearby North County Correctional Facility were safe.
“If one of your loved ones is incarcerated at Pitchess Detention Center,” the department wrote in a Facebook post that featured a dramatic fire-haunted photo of one of the Castaic facilities. “Don’t worry, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department stands poised and ready to keep them safe from the Hughes Fire,”
(At some point during the fire’s expansion, the department moved the residents of Pitchess Detention Center to the mostly cement North County Correctional Facility, which is also in the evacuation area but is not as vulnerable as Pitchess to traveling embers.)
“The Sheriff’s department has a multitude of vehicles on standby should they be needed for evacuations,” said the LASD in their Thursday Facebook post. “We are working closely with Los Angeles County Fire to ensure the employees, and incarcerated population on the property remain safe.”
About that “multitude of vehicles.” Knowledgeable justice advocates, along with several sources inside the department, told us that there has been a shortage of buses for quite some time, and the bus issue still isn’t resolved.
“The problem,” said one LASD source, “is that a lot of the people with institutional knowledge in the department are gone. After Villanueva, they’d had it. And Luna didn’t do anything to keep them. So when problems like this come up, they aren’t getting solved”
Matters aren’t helped that Sheriff Luna has never worked custody, according to the source.
There is reportedly talk at the LASD, that if the fire gets close enough that it becomes necessary to evacuate the men presently housed in the Castaic facilities—a large of cohort of whom have mental health issues—that Sheriff Luna is considering transporting them to Century Regional Detention Facility (CRDF), the county’s women’s jail located in Lynwood, CA.
Whether stashing hundreds of men in the women’s facility is legal, is not yet clear.
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More stories in the series: Facing the Inferno 2025, coming up. So watch this space.