Although Laura Carrasco and her husband were at home in Oxnard on
Monday, December 4, they didn’t smell the smoke because of the
60-mile-an-hour winds. Around 10:30 pm, they looked outside, saw
flames, and a few minutes later, firefighters went up the street
with bullhorns, telling people to evacuate.
It was the beginning of the Thomas fire, the largest recorded
fire in California history, which burned 273,400 acres in Ventura
and Santa Barbara counties, destroying about 1,000
structures.