After two days of burning in a rugged area of Santa Barbara County, the Lake Fire was the second biggest wildfire of California’s season.
As of Sunday afternoon, the fire was at 16,452 acres (25.7 square miles) with 0% containment, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
It started around 4 p.m. Friday, July 5, near Zaca Lake, in the Los Padres National Forest.
An evacuation order was issued late Saturday for a 5-mile stretch of Figueroa Mountain Road and the Sawmill Basin/Figueroa Campground area.
The map above shows the approximate fire perimeter as a black line and the evacuation zones in red. For more evacuation details and latest updates, see Santa Barbara County’s emergency map.
The fire’s western edge was within a mile of the former Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch, as well as several prominent wineries in the Foxen Canyon area.
Its cause is under investigation.
In 2007, the same area was burned by the Zaca Fire, which at that time was the second largest wildfire in California’s recorded history. It was started on July 4 by sparks from a grinding tool and wasn’t fully contained until Sept. 4; hot spots continued to burn until the last days of October. The final tally was 240,207 acres (375 square miles). Forty-three people were injured in the firefighting.
California’s biggest fire of the 2024 season is Sites, which burned 19,195 acres last month in Colusa County.
So far this year, the state has had five wildfires over 10,000 acres. Last year at this time, its biggest fire was 1,560 acres; all four of the 2023 fires over 10,000 acres started in August, according to CalFire records.