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 through Friday.
As for the Hughes fire, the Castaic-located firestorm didn’t just ignite, it seemed to explode, 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 fire, 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, the one group of residents within the mandatory evacuation area of the Hughes fire, who could not choose to evacuate are the approximately 400 residents of the two LA County jail facilities located in Castaic. The others 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 assure family members and others that the residents of Pitchess Detention Center and nearby North County Correctional Facility were safe.
“If one of your loved ones is incarcerated at Pitchess Detention Center,” the department wrote on Facebook below 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, 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 travelling embers.)
“The Sheriff’s department has a multitude of vehicles on standby should they be needed for evacuations. 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 are gone. They’ve had it.” And Luna didn’t do anything to keep them, said the source. “So problems aren’t getting solved”
Matters aren’t helped, said the source, that Sheriff Luna has never worked custody, said the source, “so he has no idea what to do, when a situation like this comes up.”
For example, if things got so dangerous that there was little choice but to evacuate the approximately 800 inmates presently housed in the Castaic facilities to somewhere out of the fire’s range, the sheriff was said to be considering transporting the Castaic men—a large of cohort of whom have mental health issues—and transporting them Century Regional Detention Facility (CRDF), the county’s women’s jail located in Lynwood, CA.
Our sources were not positive that stashing all those men in the women’s facility was legal.
****
More stories in the series: Facing the Inferno 2025, coming up. So watch this space.