More resources – equipment, firefighters and fire managers – were on the job Thursday, with more on the way, Martinez said.
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The blaze is 26 percent contained Friday morning, up from 22 percent, and open flame is confined to pockets of the fire, which has scorched more than 50 square miles.
Brett Minor, a Cal Fire engineer who works in Lake Elsinore, was part of a team of four engine crews – the fifth dropped out because of mechanical problems – that as soon as it arrived Wednesday was sent to Old Cajon Boulevard where winds from the south were rapidly pushing flames into the valley.
Elsewhere, the fire’s growth was limited because the land had become a moonscape. She doesn’t know when she can return or whether her house was still standing.
Again Friday, fire officials emphasized who important it was that residents obey mandatory evacuation orders, saying that some people had been extracted from neighborhoods aboard fire engines, hampering firefighting efforts.
The uncertainty “is an bad feeling”, she said Thursday as she lounged in a lawn chair under a tree outside an evacuation center.
Meanwhile, a new fire broke out in rural Santa Barbara County, quickly surging to about 600 acres and prompting the evacuation of a pair of campgrounds. Tiny hamlets in Kern and Tulare counties were evacuated.
The Blue Cut fire is one of almost 30 major blazes reported to have scorched some hundreds of square miles in eight Western states this week, in the midst of a wildfire season stoked by prolonged drought and unusually hot weather, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Pitassi said there still was a possibility of unexpected behavior from the fire since the landscape was so dry from five years of drought. Vegetation that dry behaved nearly like firewood, Sean Collins of the Kern County Fire Department told the AP. “The rate of travel is extremely fast”, he said.
American firefighters have uncovered extensive damage, while fighting a ferocious wildfire in California. It was also the costliest on record with $2.1 billion spent to fight fires from Alaska to Florida. Decades of aggressively knocking down small fires also have led to the buildup of flammable fuel.
Many seasoned firefighters had never seen a fire behave like the Blue Cut fire, U.S. Forest Service supervisor Jody Noiron told them at a briefing Thursday morning.
The southbound 15 Freeway through the Cajon Pass opened at 10:45 a.m., with the exception of the left-most lane from Oak Hill Road to Highway 138, according to the California Highway Patrol.
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In mountains north of San Francisco, a 6-square-mile blaze was 55 percent contained after destroying at least 268 structures, including 175 homes and eight businesses, in the working-class community of Lower Lake. Matthew Porter was in Rio with the medal-winning team when the house burned.
