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There Is a Big New Fire in Los Angeles County

The Hughes Fire ballooned to nearly 9,500 acres in a matter of hours.

01/22/2025

Illustration by Simon Abranowicz

In a textbook illustration of how quickly a fire can start, spread, and threaten lives during historically dry and windy conditions, a new blaze has broken out in beleaguered Los Angeles County.

The Hughes Fire ignited Wednesday around 11 a.m. PT to the north of Santa Clarita and has already billowed to nearly 9,500 acres, buffeted by winds of 20 to 25 miles per hour with sustained gusts up to 40 miles per hour, Lisa Phillips, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, told me. The area had been under a red-flag warning that started Sunday evening and now extends through Thursday night. “There are super dry conditions, critically dry fuel — that’s the basic formula for red flag conditions,” Phillips said. “So it’s definitely meeting criteria.”

This early in a new fire, the situation is dangerously fluid. The Hughes Fire is 0% contained and spreading swiftly as firefighters attempt to contain it through an aerial flame-suppression barrage that has diminishing returns once the winds grow stronger and begin to blow the retardant away. Once that happens, it will be up to crews on the ground to establish lines to prevent another difficult-to-fight urban fire.

As of Wednesday evening, some 31,000 people were under evacuation orders, and another 23,000 were under evacuation warnings, according to The New York Times. Authorities have had to evacuate at least three schools — yet another testament to the surprising growth and spread of the new fire.

“It’s important for people to remain aware of their surroundings, and if there is a fire nearby, you need to consider putting together a bag of some important items,” Phillips said. She stressed that, especially in rapidly evolving situations like this one, “sometimes you don’t get a whole lot of warning when they say you need to go now.”

At a news conference Wednesday evening, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said that conditions remained difficult, but that less extreme wind conditions than those they faced two weeks ago had allowed firefighters to get “the upper hand.”

The NWS expects winds to pick up overnight, which could complicate firefighting efforts in the fire-weary county. To date, some 40,000 acres of southern California have burned since the start of the year.

Editor’s note: This story was last updated January 22, at 9 p.m. ET.

Jeva Lange

Jeva is a founding staff writer at Heatmap. Her writing has also appeared in The Week, where she formerly served as executive editor and culture critic, as well as in The New York Daily News, Vice, and Gothamist, among others. Jeva lives in New York City.

Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •

02/26/2025

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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