SoCal Fires Merge, Threaten Diamond Bar

First reports of the wildfires that began late last week were in the celebrity enclave of Montecito. Since then the fires have skipped across Southern California, burning hundreds of homes and forcing the evacuation of thousands.

The Yorba Linda / Brea / Triangle Complex ... whatever you want to call them fire(s) have now been renamed the Freeway Complex Fire. The fire currently threatens the community of Diamond Bar, where firefighters are throwing massive resources at it to try to save homes.

Diamond Bar High School has already been set up as an evacuation center. Diamond Bar has also created a fire updates section on its website.

The latest evacuation update for Diamond Bar residents, at 11:15 at the time of this writing, said:

MANDATORY EVACUATION ORDERED FOR THESE RESIDENTS:

• All residents located within The Country Estates
• Residents located in the southern portion of Diamond Bar - bordered by Brea Canyon Road to the west, Ambushers Street to the north, Falcon Ridge to the east and City limits to the south.

This set of wildfires is incredibly late in the season. As California continues to suffer a multi-year drought, there has been speculation that global climate change has led to both the water shortage as well as the increased severity of wildfires.