Wildfire grows, burns nature center

The destruction LOSANGELES— wrought by a wind driven wildfire in themountains northeast of Los Angeles approached 156 square miles Sunday, burning structures, homes and anature center in a famed Southern California wildlife sanctuary in foothill desert communities.

Firefighterswere, however, able to defend Mount Wilson, which overlooks greater Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains and has a historic observatory founded more than a century ago and numerous broadcast antennas serving Southern California, from the Bobcat Fire.

The Bobcat Fire started Sept. 6 and has already doubled insizeover the lastweek — becoming one of Los Angeles County’s largest wildfires in history, according to the Los Angeles Times. No injuries have been reported.

The blaze is 15% contained as teams attempt to determine the scope of the destruction in the area about 50 miles northeast of downtown LA. Thousands of residents in the foot hill communities of the Antelope

Valley were ordered to evacuate Saturday as winds pushed the flames into Juniper Hills.

Roland Pagan watched his Juniper Hills house burn through binoculars as he stood on anearby hill, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“The ferocity of this fire was shocking,” Pagan, 80, told the newspaper.

The wildfire also destroyed the nature center at Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area, a geological wonder that attracts some 130,000 visitors per year.