Fueled by dry and windy weather, three massive fires in Southern California have now burned dozens of homes and forced tens of thousands of people to flee from communities east of Los Angeles.
A fast-moving blaze stretching for 23,000 acres across Orange and Riverside Counties destroyed several homes in the city of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and was threatening 10,500 more structures across the region as of Wednesday evening.
In El Cariso Village, a community in the hills above Lake Elsinore, blackened shells of cars were parked among charred tree trunks. Remnants of a burned home’s patio were strewed with mangled deck chairs.
Across California, more than 34,000 people were under evacuation orders and an additional 97,000 were under evacuation warnings as of Wednesday afternoon, according to state officials. Gov. Gavin Newsom has sent in the National Guard to help with evacuations, and additional firefighters have been dispatched from Northern California as well as from other states.
The largest actively burning fire in the state, in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles, grew to 49,000 acres, fire officials said. The fire has destroyed 20 homes in the Mount Baldy area, 13 in the community of Wrightwood and six cabins in rural areas, the chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Anthony Marrone, said at a news conference. An additional 2,500 structures are threatened by the growing fire, which is not at all contained, Chief Marrone said, and more than 10,000 people have had to evacuate their homes.
In San Bernardino County, the authorities said they had arrested a 34-year-old contract delivery driver for FedEx on suspicion of arson in the Line fire, which damaged some homes near Running Springs overnight and was still burning on Wednesday near Big Bear Lake.
All told, more than 65 large fires were blazing across the United States on Wednesday, mostly in the West. So far this year, fires have torn through almost seven million acres of land across the country — the largest acreage to have burned by early September since 2018, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Much cooler weather arrived in California on Wednesday and was expected to continue into next week, greatly aiding firefighting efforts there. But windy conditions forecast for most of the day remained a problem, officials said.
California is primed for fire after two consecutive winters of heavy rain, which fed the growth of brush and other plants throughout the state. A hot summer has parched that vegetation, experts said.
“It was very pretty during the spring, and we thought, ‘Wow, it’s going to stay that way,’” the Orange County Fire Authority chief, Brian Fennessy, said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “Now that we’ve had months of hot weather — we’ve just experienced four, five days of extremely hot weather — that live vegetation is dead” and ready to burn, he said.
Here’s the latest on some major blazes around the country:
No state is battling more large fires than Oregon, where there are 24 burning. A close second is Idaho, with 22. Firefighters say they hope that cooler and wetter weather this week will help curb the growth of the fires.
Ten Western states were under red flag warnings and fire watches Wednesday, indicating that conditions across the region will be prone to further fire spread and activity, even though the heat wave was easing. Conditions are expected to improve rapidly by Thursday, but dry air and wind will continue to hamper fire prevention efforts, forecasters said.
California
The Bridge fire, burning in the Angeles National Forest, damaged buildings at the Mountain High ski resort on Tuesday, and by Wednesday the fire was racing toward Mount Baldy Village, authorities said.
Three people, including an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeant, were stuck in a remote area five miles west of Mount Baldy. They were trapped by roads that were closed because of the fire, and rescue crews were waiting for smoke to clear to airlift them out, the Los Angeles County sheriff, Robert Luna, said, adding that the people were believed to be safe and not injured.
Jennifer and Jeff Sponsler, both 77, evacuated on Tuesday from their home in Piñon Hills, a rural community about 75 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. The couple waited on Wednesday at an evacuation center with their three horses, three dogs and six cats.
They knew it was time to go when “it was raining ash and charcoal chunks,” Ms. Sponsler said, adding that they have lived in the neighborhood for 21 years and have never had to flee their home. “It’s just a very frightening thing when you can see the flames on the hill.”
The Line fire, which began in the San Bernardino Mountains, is threatening 65,000 structures, as it pushes toward Big Bear Lake. The fire has damaged homes in the rural community of Running Springs, but officials would not say how many or how severely. The fire also destroyed a lookout tower on Keller Peak. Firefighters have gained ground on the blaze, which was 18 percent contained as of Wednesday morning, and hoped improved weather conditions would work in their favor.
“We’ll just see how Mother Nature treats us today.,” Judd Gaines, an operation section chief with Cal Fire, said at a news briefing on Wednesday.
Officials of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said they had identified the man suspected of starting the fire — Justin Halstenberg, 34 — through video images of his vehicle at the scene. Mr. Halstenberg’s home in Norco was searched, they said, and investigators found evidence connecting him to the fire.
Mr. Halstenberg was being held without bail in a county jail in Rancho Cucamonga.
Sheriff Shannon D. Dicus said his investigators were continuing to work on the case. “It’s my belief that, as time goes on and we allow them to do the critical work that they’re doing, that we will actually find out the suspect may have been responsible for other fires,” Sheriff Dicus said at a news briefing.
The Airport fire began Monday afternoon about 15 miles east of Irvine, Calif., near a flying field for remote-controlled model airplanes, hence the name. The fire was started by a public works crew that was using heavy equipment to move boulders into position to block public access to an area of vegetation that was particularly parched and flammable, authorities say.
Two civilians had been injured in the blaze, including one who suffered burns, and 10 firefighters were treated for minor injuries.
At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, fire officials emphasized that improving weather had helped prevent the Airport fire from spreading as significantly over the course of the day as they had feared, though at roughly 23,000 acres as of Wednesday evening, it was still uncontained.
Fire officials said that some structures had been damaged or destroyed, including some recreational cabins and other facilities in the Cleveland National Forest, but they did not say how many, or whether homes were among the burned structures. The fire was burning between large suburbs full of houses and was threatening thousands of homes near Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.
On Wednesday, a thick layer of smoke hovered above Lake Elsinore, on the other side of the mountains from where the fire had begun, and ash fell from the sky.
Salam Gorou, 34, the manager of the Lake Elsinore Market on Highway 74, said that several families who had evacuated from El Cariso Village had gathered outside the market Tuesday night and were looking up toward the burning ridgeline from the parking lot. Some of them were crying, he said.
“Some of them even had some stuff packed and cars packed, and they couldn’t even get those out of there,” Mr. Gorou said. The neighborhood where he lives was also under evacuation orders, and he had moved his cars to the other side of the lake, he added.
Lexie Flores, 44, a high school teacher who has lived in the foothills above Lake Elsinore for 13 years, said she was keeping an eye on the winds and was hoping they stay calm.
“We have chickens, and we have dogs and cats, but we can round them up and get them out if we need to,” Ms. Flores said. “But no visible flames, so that’s good news.”
The authorities said they were still concerned about fire conditions on Wednesday, despite the break in the weather.
The low-pressure system that is moving into California will drop temperatures and raise humidity levels by Thursday. But the system is initially bringing drier weather and wind gusts of up to 25 miles an hour through Wednesday evening, according to Casey Oswalt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s San Diego office. The combination is “not ideal for firefighting conditions,” Ms. Oswalt said.
Nevada
The Davis fire, which began over the weekend between Reno and Carson City, spread to about 6,000 acres as of Wednesday and was 31 percent contained.
Meteorologists believed that high winds and dry conditions would allow the fire and any others that are ignited to grow rapidly out of control and prevent people from safely evacuating.
Oregon
A blaze in rural central Oregon known as the Rail Ridge fire has destroyed a handful of homes and grown to more than 161,000 acres, five times the size of San Francisco. Officials said cooler, wetter weather this week would make it easier to contain the fire, which began on Labor Day. Even before this latest round of fires, Oregon last month exceeded its longstanding record for acres burned in a year.
Idaho
An enormous fire in the Boise National Forest merged this week with another, creating a blaze about 40 miles north of Idaho’s capital city that has now burned a total of more than 78,000 acres.
The Wapiti fire, also in the Boise National Forest, is even larger. It was sparked by lightning in July and has grown to more than 120,000 acres. The fire, which officials say has been fueled by an abundance of extremely dry vegetation, is about 12 percent contained.
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