Los Angeles Unified school officials are opening several centers where students affected by wildfires can pick up free meals. 

Meals will be available between 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the following locations: 

Charles McCaleb is all about trying to keep things in perspective.

In 2008, flames from the Tea fire could be seen from Highway 192 in the hills overlooking Montecito as they destroyed more than 200 homes in Santa Barbara County.

Last week, the slopes on either side of Highway 101 in Los Angeles were consumed in fire as countless commuters were stuck in traffic and watched the flames draw near.

Montecito looked almost like a ghost town Monday.

Stores and gas stations in the evacuation zone north of Highway 192 were closed, and only a scattering of residents remained in the neighborhood.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Fresno-Kings Battalion Chief Roger Raines and his platoon of more than a dozen trucks and water tenders were on hand however. It was their job to assess how vulnerable homes north of the highway between San Ysidro Road and Park Lane were to the incoming fire.

The quaint eateries, coffee shops and wine shops along Lillie Drive in Summerland were closed or empty Monday as ash fell on the quiet beach town in Santa Barbara County. Residents walked their dogs and checked the daily fire map posted on a board outside the local fire station. 

Up along State Route 192, Laurent Pellerin wore a surgical mask as he packed his red Audi station wagon with winter clothes and snow chains. 

The 48-year-old home decor store manager was getting ready to drive his family to Chicago for a new job when the fire closed in on his cottage near Toro Canyon over the weekend. Now they are leaving, unsure if their home will survive after they go. 

The last time some of the slopes and canyons burned in the mountains east of Santa Barbara in the 1970s, four firefighters operating bulldozers died in a rollover accident.

In such difficult terrain, officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on Monday that they have essentially no way to get boots and hoses on the ground to attack the western front of the Thomas fire directly.

Instead, fire crews caravanned out of the Ventura County Fairgrounds on Monday and headed to the residential streets in the south-facing foothills of Carpinteria. That’s where they set up defensive positions and waited just in case the fire moved downhill .

A Redding firefighter who was injured while battling the Thomas fire is returning home, officials said Monday.

The firefighter sustained the injury around 7 a.m. Sunday, the Redding Fire Department said in a statement . He was taken to a Santa Barbara hospital, where doctors treated a fracture to his lower leg. 

“Our firefighter is in good spirits and is returning home,” the statement said. 

As the Thomas fire continues to rage, burning more than 200,000 acres, wind speeds are expected to be on the lower end of what’s been seen over the last week, forecasters say.

Over Sunday night and into Monday morning, there were wind gusts of around 20 mph across the lower mountains and foothills in the region of southeastern Santa Barbara County into southwestern Ventura County.

“Wind was probably not the biggest factor last night to this morning — it’s probably more the complex terrain, very dry and possibly widespread fuels for the fire and the fact that it’s a pretty large and ongoing fire,” said Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Carlos Guerra couldn’t breathe.

There was smoke in the air and the 89-year-old didn’t know where it was coming from. So he opened the door to his trailer home in Carpinteria last week and saw snow.

“It looked that way at least,” he said. “It was ash, lots of ash.”

Since it started Monday, the Thomas fire has scorched 230,000 acres, making it the fifth-largest wildfire in modern California history.

Here’s a look at the others: 

While other large fires raged in California prior to 1932, those records are less reliable, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.