Joe McLean has lived in a two-bedroom home in a rural hillside neighborhood in Southern California for his entire life, and in that time he has seen plenty of fires. Every time, they blew by. Someone else’s house was taken.
This time was different.
A fire driven by searing heat and powerful winds roared across the Santa Ana Mountains and devoured his house in the community of El Cariso Village, leaving the structure a charred and mangled mess. His Ford Explorer, parked nearby, was reduced to a hunk of metal — tires blown, rims melted, windows shattered.
“My dad bought the place back in ’72 and I was born in ’81 and lived up there my whole life,” said Mr. McLean, who works as a carpenter. “Never thought it would happen. They’ve always taken care of us, you know. We have a very good Fire Department.”
The 23,000-acre fire, known as the Airport fire, was one of three major wildfires in Southern California that erupted during a severe heat wave and continued to swell on Thursday. The fires have collectively displaced tens of thousands of people, charred more than 100,000 acres and strained the state’s firefighting resources.
The California fires were among more than 65 large fires blazing across the United States on Thursday, mostly in the West. So far this year, fires have torn through almost seven million acres of land across the country, the largest number of acres to have burned by early September since 2018, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
But firefighters in the West said they were hopeful that cooler and wetter weather forecast for the rest of the week would help them stop the flames from spreading. In Southern California, forecasters said they expected winds to quiet, humidity levels to increase and temperatures across the region to be 10 degrees below average on Thursday, with those favorable conditions continuing into next week.
Charles Casab, 38, and his family were forced on Wednesday to evacuate from their homes in Big Bear Lake, a community in the San Bernardino Mountains known for its vacation homes and ski resorts. A 36,000-acre fire known as the Line fire that erupted in the foothills has threatened 65,000 structures, including many in the Big Bear community, officials said.
Mr. Casab, who works as a security guard at a local hospital, feared that he might return to find his and his parents’ homes destroyed. “We’ll lose everything — everything left that we have that we haven’t packed in all four of these cars,” he said as he watched his huskies eating in the back of an S.U.V.
Another longtime Big Bear Lake resident, Tammi Wormsbecker, 50, also arrived at an evacuation shelter on Wednesday afternoon. She said she knew that fires could be beneficial for the land, but it was painful for them to come so close.
“That’s my home. I’ve lived there forever. And going back after such devastation and seeing everything that’s so familiar not be the same, it’s a hard thing to cope with,” Ms. Wormsbecker said.
The Line fire, which began last week, was only about 20 percent contained as of Wednesday evening, but firefighters said they expected to gain more ground in the coming days because of the improved weather.
Officials with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department arrested a man believed to have started the fire, and he was being held without bail in a local jail. Sheriff Shannon D. Dicus said his investigators believed that the suspect might have also started other fires in the region.
Across California, more than 34,000 people were under evacuation orders and another 97,000 were under evacuation warnings as of Wednesday, 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 and other states.
The state’s largest actively burning fire, in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles, has destroyed dozens of homes in rural communities, including Wrightwood and Mount Baldy. Known as the Bridge fire, it has threatened 2,500 structures and forced more than 10,000 people to evacuate from their homes.
The Airport fire in Orange and Riverside Counties has burned several homes, but firefighters said they were able to keep it from growing significantly on Wednesday because of improved weather conditions. Two civilians were injured in the blaze, including one who suffered burns, and 10 firefighters were treated for minor injuries.
Still, the fire had left a trail of devastation in the isolated community along Ortega Highway that was Mr. McLean’s home.
The flames blew in on Tuesday around 4 p.m., he said. He heard neighbors shouting that houses were burning, and that everyone needed to leave.
“People were going by telling me: ‘My house is on fire. Get out of here,’” Mr. McLean said. “There were multiple homes on fire in the distance.”
Mr. McLean said he and his wife and mother jumped in two cars with a dog and cat — their other cat could not be found — and left.
Their house was still standing then.
A couple who lived nearby, Jenny Poindexter, 74, and Michael Williams, 77, left a short while later and saw the McLeans’ house on fire as they passed by.
“It’s like being in the middle of a tornado,” Ms. Poindexter said later, recounting their harrowing escape down the mountain toward Lake Elsinore. “It was fire. It was ashes. Propane tanks were popping. Trees were exploding. It was crazy. We had masks on. We just threw everything in the truck and ran.”
Driving down the winding, narrow highway, she said, there were flames on each side of the road. “We had to drive through two fires on each side with visibility about five feet,” she said.
By late Wednesday, the fire was only 5 percent contained but the weather conditions were forecast to improve, with a low pressure system expected to drop temperatures and raise humidity levels. Thick coastal clouds were expected to bring moisture to the areas where the fires were raging and “drastically improve conditions for firefighters,” said Sebastian Westerink, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.
Across the West, no state is battling more large fires than Oregon, where there are 25 burning. A close second is Idaho, with 22.
A blaze in rural central Oregon known as the Rail Ridge fire has destroyed a handful of homes and grown to more than 160,000 acres. 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 surpassed its longstanding record for acres burned in a year.
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 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 125,000 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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