Residents allowed to return home as threat lessens in 145-acre Macy fire in Lake Elsinore (2024)

The 145-acre Macy fire burning near Lake Elsinore that posed a threat to dozens of homes overnight Thursday and destroyed one of them had mostly subsided by Friday, with evacuation orders and warnings lifted, Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department spokesman Rob Roseen said.

The fire was 60% contained as of early Friday evening, officials said. Containment is the percentage of the fire that is not expected to jump manmade or natural fuel breaks.

Though residents were allowed to return to their homes, helicopters were still filling their bellies with water at the lake and dropping their loads in a ravine where flames were putting up light smoke, Roseen said.

Crews were working on reinforcing containment lines to keep what little fire remained away from homes.

One house and one detached garage on the same property were destroyed, Roseen said.

Ortega Highway, also known as Highway 74, was closed between Lake Elsinore and San Juan Capistrano but was reopened to traffic around 6:30 p.m. on Friday.

Despite having gained the upper hand on the blaze, fire commanders remained concerned about the combination of extreme heat, low humidity and winds of 15-25 mph.

And that’s not just for this fire.

“Our fuel growth is probably 200% of what we’d expect this time of year and is more than in recent years,” Roseen said.

“If there are any new starts in the county, we are going to have rapid growth like we did on this fire.”

‘Definitely scary’

Late Friday morning, Rosale Flores stood on the porch of her Rose Street home that had been dyed a light pink by flame retardant dropped by an airplane.

Flores said she didn’t speak much English, but when she spotted a firefighter in front of her home, she clasped her hands together and said, “Thank you so much. Good job.”

Maria Lopez and a friend sat in metal chairs in the shade outside the Jamieson Street home where she has lived for 22 years. In the background, she could hear the whir of chainsaws as firefighters cut through vegetation on the hill up the street.

Lopez said she was worried when she saw smoke and flames on Thursday but did not heed a sheriff’s deputy’s recommendation to evacuate.

“They said we were in danger,” Lopez said, adding that firefighters appeared to put the flames out quickly.

And she stayed home despite her concern that the flames could roar back overnight.

Daisy Rosales was driving home to Lake Elsinore on Ortega Highway on Thursday afternoon from her job at Children’s Hospital of Orange County when she saw smoke.

Rosales, 36, said she didn’t want to wait for someone else to call 911. She’s lived in the home at the top of Jamieson Street for 26 years and said, “We’ve been through many, many fires.”

Usually, they are stopped on the other side of a drainage from the large property she shares with her mother, brother, dachshund Buster and the birds that alight on one of several feeders in the front yard. But the Macy fire would be different.

“It was so much worse, the crackling. It went down fast toward the bottom (of the hill), which is when we decided to make a run for it,” Rosales said.

She arrived home and saw the fire was moving rapidly, pushed downhill by the wind toward homes. “We said we should probably start getting stuff together just in case, but pretty quickly we realized we needed to speed that up and we needed to start putting stuff right away in the car,” Rosales said Friday on her porch as a firefighter hosed pink fire redardant off her her car and lawn furniture.

“When we looked up it was just around the rim. As I was grabbing my stuff and kept looking out the window, it was already lower. And then by the time I came to drop my stuff off in the living room, it had jumped and there was now bushes down at the bottom that were already (on fire). The flames, it was insane. The flames were just humungous. … We could feel the heat of the fire,” Rosales said.

By that time, sheriff’s deputies were evacuating neighbors but had not reached Rosales’ home.

“We just took the hint of taking off ourselves,” she said. “It was definitely scary.”

Anticipating the shift

The Macy fire was reported around 5:30 p.m. Thursday on a hillside near the El Cariso Campground north of Ortega Highway.

Within 45 minutes to an hour, 50 acres had burned, Roseen said. Within two hours, 100 acres had been blackened.

A local afternoon wind phenomenon, the Elsinore Effect, pushed the flames downhill and toward homes.

See also: What is the Elsinore Effect?

But firefighters, anticipating the shift, were in place, Roseen said.

About an hour after the blaze was first reported, it jumped Ortega Highway, burning along both sides, officials said Thursday. The highway was closed from Grand Avenue to San Juan Capistrano and Grand Avenue was closed from Machado Street to Maiden Lane.

CHP officers on Friday were arranging escorts in and out of the closure area for residents who have proof of identification showing they have properties there. The highway was expected to stay closed on Friday.

In addition to evacuation orders being lifted, several roadblocks were taken down on Friday, including one on Riverside Drive near Lakeside High School.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection provided a searchable map of evacuation areas.

No injuries have been reported as a result of the wildfire. The cause of the fire remains unknown.

Staff writer Sydney Barragan and City News Service contributed to this report.

Originally Published: July 26, 2024 at 7:11 a.m.