A growing wildfire sending massive billows of smoke into the sky north of Los Angeles nearly tripled in size, injuring three residents, destroying at least three homes, knocking out power to many more and spurring evacuations in a number of mountain communities.
Mandatory evacuations were extended on Saturday into neighborhoods in the canyons on the northwestern edge of Altadena, Glendale, Pasadena, La Crescenta and Big Tujunga Canyon, Forest Service spokesman Bruce Quintelier said.
The flames crept lower down the slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains despite winds blowing predominantly in the other direction, threatening more than 2,000 homes in the La Canada Flintridge area. Officials estimated that 1,000 homes had been evacuated.
“Today what happened is what I call the perfect storm of fuels, weather, and topography coming together,” said Captain Mike Dietrich, the incident commander for the US Forest Service. “Essentially the fire burned at will; it went where it wanted to when it wanted to.”
At least three homes deep in the Angeles National Forest were destroyed, and firefighters were searching for others, Dietrich said.
The fire was the largest and most dangerous of several burning around southern and central California and in Yosemite National Park.
It made a run of 9km to 13km to the north and west in just four hours, Dietrich said, bringing new concerns for the community of Acton and the area around Santa Clarita, Dietrich.
Flames knocked out power to at least 164 residences in La Canada Flintridge on Saturday, according to Southern California Edison.
Repair crews were ordered to stay out of the area because of fire danger.
At least three people were burned and airlifted to local hospitals, Dietrich said. He had no further details on their injuries.
Air crews waged a fierce battle against the southeast corner of the fire, burning dangerously close to canyon homes. Spotter planes with tankers on their tails dove well below ridge lines to lay bright orange retardant then pulled up dramatically over neighborhoods, and giant sky crane helicopters swooped in to unleash showers on the biggest flareups.
The fire was burning in steep wooded hills next to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in northern Pasadena.
A major goal was to keep the fire from spreading up Mount Wilson, where many of the region’s broadcast and communications antennas and the historic Mount Wilson Observatory are located, officials said.
“The Mount Wilson communications site is still actively threatened, and we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” Dietrich said.
A second fire in the Angeles National Forest was burning several kilometers to the east in a canyon above the city of Azusa.
The 9km² blaze, which started on Tuesday afternoon, was 85 percent contained on Saturday. No homes were threatened.
A wildfire on the Palos Verdes Peninsula on the south Los Angeles County coast was 100 percent contained on Saturday afternoon, county fire officials said. As many as 1,500 people were forced to flee at the height of the fire on Thursday night. No injuries were reported.
Southeast of Los Angeles in Riverside County, a 9km² fire in a rural area of the San Bernardino National Forest was 10 percent contained, Forest Service spokeswoman Norma Bailey said.
To the north, in the state’s coastal midsection, a 24km² fire threatening Pinnacles National Monument kept 100 homes under evacuation orders near the Monterey County town of Soledad. The blaze was started by agricultural fireworks used to scare animals away from crops.
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