A mountainside becomes engulfed in flames as the Airport Fire gains ground near Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Sept. 10, 2024. Out-of-control wildfires surrounding Los Angeles continued to grow on Sept. 10, forcing families to evacuate and blanketing the sky with choking smoke.DAVID SWANSON/AFP/Getty Images
Apocalyptic-looking plumes of smoke dotted skies over parts of Southern California on Tuesday as firefighters continued to battle at least three major wildfires that erupted amid a blistering heat wave and were threatening tens of thousands of homes and buildings.
In Orange County, firefighters used bulldozers, helicopters and planes to control a rapidly spreading blaze that started Monday and spread to about 8 square kilometres in only a few hours. The blaze was ignited by a spark from heavy equipment being used by public workers, officials said.
By Tuesday, it had charred more than 36 square kilometres and was heading over mountainous terrain into neighbouring Riverside County with no containment, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi. It burned some communications towers on top of a peak, though so far officials said they did not have reports of the damage disrupting police or fire communication signals in the area.
Two firefighters who suffered heat-related injuries and a resident who suffered from smoke inhalation were treated at a hospital and released.
Sherri Fankhauser, her husband and her daughter set up lawn chairs and were watching helicopters make water drops on a flaming hillside a few hundred yards away from their Trabuco Canyon home on Tuesday.
They didn’t evacuate even though their street had been under a mandatory evacuation order since Monday. A neighbour did help Fankhauser’s 89-year-old mother-in-law evacuate, Fankhauser said. The flames died down last night but flared up again in the morning.
“You can see fire coming over the ridge now,” Fankhauser said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s getting a little scarier now.”
She said she trusted the crews would get things under control and that firefighters were keeping them informed.
Meanwhile, in the San Bernardino National Forest, about 105 kilometres east of Los Angeles, some 65,600 homes and buildings were under threat, including those under mandatory evacuations and those under evacuation warnings, nearly double the number from the previous day.
Three firefighters have been injured since the blaze was reported Thursday, state fire managers said.
The blaze had charred about 96 square kilometres of grass and brush and blanketed the area with a thick cloud of dark smoke Tuesday. The acrid air prompted several districts in the area to close schools through the end of the week because of safety concerns.
The fire was 5 per cent contained and was affecting small mountain towns where Southern California residents ski in the winter and mountain bike in the summer.
Other major fires were burning across the West, including in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, where about 20,000 people had to flee a blaze outside Reno.
Firefighters hope to gain the upper hand as cooler weather moves into California later in the week.
An excessive heat warning issued for the Los Angeles area will expire Tuesday night.
Another blaze in Southern California’s Angeles National Forest, north of the city of Glendora, in Los Angeles County, grew to more than 12 square kilometres and wasn’t contained at all as of Tuesday.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department ordered visitors at a campground and residents of an adjacent river community to evacuate, the U.S. Forest Service said.
In Northern California, a fire measuring less than 2.6 square kilometres that started Sunday burned at least 30 homes and commercial buildings and destroyed 40 to 50 vehicles in Clearlake City, 117 kilometres north of San Francisco, officials said. Roughly 4,000 people were forced to evacuate by the so-called Boyles Fire, which was about 40 per cent contained Monday afternoon.
In Nevada, the uncontained Davis Fire burning about 32 kilometres outside Reno grew to about 26 square kilometres after igniting Sunday. It originated in the Davis Creek Regional Park in the Washoe Valley and was burning in heavy timber and brush, firefighters said.
An emergency declaration issued for Washoe County by Gov. Joe Lombardo on Sunday noted that about 20,000 people were evacuated from neighbourhoods, businesses, parks and campgrounds. Parts of south Reno remained under the evacuation notice on Monday and some homes, businesses and traffic signals in the area were without power.
In Idaho, fire managers were prepared for an active day, with warm, dry and windy conditions and even more challenges on Tuesday. The Boulder and the Lava Fires are burning in western Idaho.
In central Oregon, several blazes prompted evacuation warnings, including one west of Mount Bachelor in the Deschutes National Forest.