Fueled by dry and windy weather, two Southern California fires exploded in size overnight, jumping freeways and threatening thousands of homes east of Los Angeles.
One of them, a brush fire that erupted on Monday in a rural area of Orange County southeast of Los Angeles, had grown to more than 22,000 acres as of Wednesday morning. Named the Airport fire, the blaze has spread into neighboring Riverside County and crossed Highway 74, triggering mandatory evacuation orders in Lake Elsinore and Temescal Valley. Several schools were closed Wednesday in those areas.
Another fire, in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles, grew from a few thousand acres on Tuesday to 48,000 as of Wednesday morning. That fire appeared to be approaching the ski-resort town of Wrightwood and the community of Mount Baldy Village. Officials have not provided any damage estimates.
In San Bernardino County, the authorities said they had arrested a 34-year-old man suspected 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 70 large fires were blazing across the United States on Wednesday, mostly in the West, as a severe heat wave blanketed the region. So far this year, fires have torn through almost 7 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 could cause fires to swell quickly or create new difficult-to-control blazes, 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 in the San Gabriel Mountains has ballooned into the largest of three major fires in Southern California and is now at 48,000 acres. It was “growing exponentially” late Tuesday, Chief Fennessy said.
The chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Anthony Marrone, said on Tuesday evening that firefighters were focusing on defending buildings in the mountain communities of Wrightwood and Mount Baldy, which together are home to about 5,000 people.
“We’ve seen some really challenging conditions and fire behavior,” said Robert Garcia, the fire chief for the Angeles National Forest, where the fire is burning.
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.
Firefighters have. gained ground on the blaze, which was 14 percent contained as of Wednesday morning.
Arnold Menjivar, a spokesman assigned to the Line fire, said firefighters would be able make more direct attacks on Wednesday because of improved weather conditions.
“Their goal is to continue fighting the fire aggressively,” Mr. Menjivar said. “They are expecting that to happen today with cooler temperatures and higher humidity.”
There have long been fires in the San Bernardino Mountains. Their effects are amplified by the growing number of people who have moved there after being priced out of Los Angeles. In June, the county’s board of supervisors asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency for the disaster-prone area as a result of escalating fire insurance rates.
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. In other words, an effort to prevent a fire accidentally sparked a fire.
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 weather system, which will eventually bring below-average temperatures to much of Southern California next week, “at least initially will bring an uptick in stronger winds, which are not ideal for firefighting conditions,” Ms. Oswalt said. Those winds could also make new wildfires more likely to erupt and spread.
Nevada
The Davis fire, which began over the weekend between Reno and Carson City, had spread to about 5,000 acres as of Tuesday evening. Meteorologists believed that high winds and dry conditions on Wednesday 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 157,000 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 surpassed 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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