Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said if the wind continues, and rain doesn’t touch the region, the Thomas fire could continue for a few more weeks. 

“Until the wind stops blowing, there’s really not a lot we can do as far as controlling the perimeter, so our opportunities are hopefully going to come in tomorrow as the wind lets up,” Lorenzen said. Then, he said, the firefighters can place line around the blaze and contain part of it, but “this is a fight we’re going to be fighting probably for a couple of weeks.”

While there was once such a thing as a predictable wildfire season, Lorenzen said that season now seems to last all year — a shift, he said, potentially triggered by six years of drought and climate change.

Alicia Stratton stood alongside railroad tracks in Faria Beach and watched the flames burn a few hundred feet away. She had evacuated her home about 30 minutes earlier. 

Stratton, 58, lives in Oak View, but her family has a vacation home in Faria Beach.

“This fire kept migrating,” she said. “As soon as the wind picked up, I started to worry.” 

Courtney Horrow isn’t taking any chances.  

She is taking her two daughters, ages 4 and 6, to Palm Desert — away from the growing winds that for days have filled the skies with smoke and ash and now threaten her home, which sits up a hill on a windy street on North Bundy Drive and Chalon Road in Brentwood.

She didn’t plan on returning to her white-wooded house until Sunday. As she placed bags of clothes in the back seat of her black SUV, she said that many of her neighbors already had chosen to evacuate.

Gentler-than-expected winds Thursday morning gave firefighters a toehold against the wildfire burning in Bel-Air, which was 20% contained by 11 a.m.

The 475-acre Skirball fire has not grown in nearly a day, a testament to the overnight assault that crews launched on the western and northern edges of the fire, closest to the 405 Freeway and multimillion-dollar homes, officials said.

Despite the progress, the fight was far from over, officials said. Thursday afternoon, firefighters will face bone-dry air with a relative humidity of 4%, and 33 mph winds out of the northeast that could push the fire toward the 405.

One of Ventura County’s most prominent politicians, former Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, walked into the Ojai police station Thursday, frustrated after days of living out of his car and monitoring the shifting Thomas fire.

Bradbury, wearing aviator glasses as he leaned on his cane, said he had fled to the Ventura County Fairgrounds earlier this week with about half of his horses — he sits on the fairgrounds board, after all — but wanted to return to his ranch in Ojai. The retired D.A., who held the position for more than two decades, just didn’t know where the fire was or whether the threat was still real.

City Manager Steve McClary sympathized with Bradbury’s frustration. “The problem with giving specifics of the fire: It could change in five minutes,” McClary said. 

Firefighters battled growing, ferocious winds across the street from homes along the edge of Faria Beach in Ventura late Thursday morning.

The gusts kicked up flames on nearby palm trees and dry bushes. 

A police car drove up and down the road with a megaphone blaring: “mandatory evacuation” and “please go the other way, the road is closed.”

Residents west of the 405 Freeway who live near the Sepulveda Pass on Chalon Road and North Bundy Drive were cautiously optimistic Thursday morning about whether the fire would jump the freeway.

Still, many had prepared to evacuate. As a gust of wind blew dried leaves into the air, Bob Greer, 81, opened the trunk of his white Toyota.

Suitcases, photographs, documents and medication peeked out. “The one thing you cannot replace are photographs,” he said.

Huntington Beach firefighters were responding to a vegetation near the corner of Beach Boulevard and Adams Avenue.

Authorities urged the public to avoid the area.

Along Highway 33, about 3 miles north of Ojai, some residents who fled late Wednesday returned Thursday morning to find their homes in ruins.

One relative of a homeowner, who declined to be identified, said her mother in law was ordered to evacuate her three-bedroom home off Camino Cielo and the Maricopa Highway. She returned to find a heap of smoldering rubble. Her family members said they were working to restore a water pump so that they could douse hot spots and soak the embers.

Other homes off Highway 33 were spared. A ranch atop a ridge at Cozy Ojai Road stood virtually untouched, with a yellow Post-It on the front door for firefighters and first responders: “we evacuated!”