Tripp said the fire was gobbling up roughly 10,000 acres a day, noting that one acre is roughly the size of a football field.
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Even though their job is tough and strenuous, the firefighters said they all love what they do. Slightly cooler, moister conditions and diminished winds were expected to help firefighters on Monday.
The fire had consumed 33,170 acres of dense brush in the hills near Santa Clarita by Monday afternoon since it broke out Friday.
Almost 3,000 firefighters are battling the fire, which has raged for four days near Santa Clarita, about 60 kilometers north of Los Angeles. By Monday, a blaze in the scenic Big Sur region of the Central Coast had destroyed 20 homes and threatened 1,650 others as it burned 23 square miles.
Thousands of people are helping fight the blaze, including 341 engines and 21 helicopters, officials said.
One fatality has been reported.
At least 18 homes already have been destroyed and authorities reported one fatality, a man’s burned body found in a parked vehicle in the fire zone.
Bruce Sanborn and Suzi Fox learned they had lost the house they shared on Little Tujunga Canyon Road after seeing its charred shell on the Saturday news.
On Tuesday, firefighting authorities escalated their evacuation orders to encompass approximately 10,000 homes, affecting as many as 20,000 people. During a trip to a store, Sanborn saw images of their burned property flash across a television. “I grabbed all the pictures of the kids, and then I took the paintings of my parents that had been done by a local artist”, Ellen Masten said. “At some point, you know you’re defeated and you have to step back and save what you can”.
Support has also been offered to two firefighters assigned to the Sand fire whose homes at a forest service facility were destroyed. During the weekend, authorities discovered a man’s burned body in the fire zone.
Officials said only 10% of the fire was under control.
As John Tripp of the Los Angeles County Fire Department put it, “We’ve probably – over three days – saved at least 2,000 homes that were directly in the path and threat of the fire”.
Towering columns of smoke could be seen from miles away, signposting the dangers of the Sand Fire, named for the area’s Sand Canyon. We’d have to go back a long way to compare a fire to this. The entire year is now fire season. He said calmer winds were helping to keep the fire stationary. “We don’t have a fire truck for every house”.
“These are not normal times”, Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Daryl Osby said.
“I give talks all the time about how to protect yourself against wildfires in the urban community and the first thing I tell them is ‘The fire department may not come,'” San Bernardino County Fire Battalion Chief Michael Wakoski told KVCR. “It’s basically all year”.
Juliet Kinikin said Sunday that there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area. Air quality health alerts have been issued in the regional areas. “It was an inferno that was blazing. just coming over the ridge”.
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Her sister also left her home down the road. He said they would do their best to save the animals. “The citizens were there trying to evacuate, trying to get animals out”. A veterinarian called to say he could give Abby fluids.
