California wildfires force
thousands from their mountainside homes.
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A firefighting army converged Monday on a dangerous wildfire burning in the mountainous northern fringe of metropolitan Los Angeles after it wildly expanded and forced thousands of people from their homes over the weekend.
Nearly 3,000 firefighters were put on the lines after the fire ballooned to more than 51 square miles since Friday, forced an expansion of evacuations to 10,000 homes — an estimated 20,000 people — and destroyed at least 18 residences.
Michael Wakoski, incident commander on the Southern California Incident Management Team 3, called conditions “explosive” with very fast fire movement. “It’s averaged about 10,000 acres a day,” he told reporters. “An acre is a football field, so imagine that, 10,000 football fields a day.”
John Tripp, Los Angeles County deputy fire chief, said 200 more fire engines were brought in Sunday and Monday to help try to douse the fire, adding to the 120 already there.
“We’re building this organization up because, as you’ve seen for three days, the fire wants to get up, it wants to run and it wants to go through 10,000 acres and threaten thousands of homes,” said Tripp, who estimated that firefighters saved 2,000 homes in the fire’s first three days.
Officials also implored people to leave without delay when evacuations are ordered.
County fire Chief Daryl Osby said firefighters had encountered residents when they arrived in endangered communities, which forced the firefighters to get those people out of their homes to safety instead of concentrating on putting out the fire.
“They felt that they lost additional structures because they had to stop what they were doing to help citizens evacuate,” Osby said.
Despite the fire’s intensity, there were no injuries Sunday.
During the weekend, authorities found a man’s burned body in the fire zone. The death remained under investigation Monday.
In Santa Clarita, 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Juliet Kinikin said Sunday there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area.
“And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house,” she told The Associated Press.
Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds.
Lois Wash, 87, said she, her daughter and her dog evacuated, but her husband refused.
“My husband’s stubborn as a mule,” Wash told KABC-TV. “I don’t know if he got out of there or not. … I think the last time I looked, it was about 100 yards from us. … All we can do is pray.”
About 300 miles up the coast, crews battled another fire spanning more than 23 square miles that has destroyed 20 homes and forced evacuations outside the scenic Big Sur region.