Evacuated areas included the ski-resort town of Wrightwood, where some 4,500 people live.
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A fire official says a blaze that destroyed more than 175 homes, businesses and other structures in a Northern California community grew very little Monday afternoon but firefighters are struggling to contain it. It’s estimated the Clayton blaze remains just 20 percent contained.
In another sign of progress, fire officials lifted numerous evacuation orders in the town, allowing about 4,000 residents to return home earlier in the day. Pashilk is suspected of sparking the blaze that exploded over the weekend.
Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin said Damin Anthony Pashilk of Clearlake, California was arrested Monday on 17 counts of arson and is in jail.
Staff at a hospital in Clearlake, a neighboring town of about 15,000, rushed to transfer 16 patients to another hospital 25 miles away while firefighters carried goats and other animals to safety as homes burned around them. The blaze was burning along Interstate 15. The fire has also burned the post office, a winery, a Habitat for Humanity office and several businesses. No injuries have been reported, but pets have died as flames swept into Lower Lake, a small town about 90 miles north of San Francisco.
A fast-moving wildfire has destroyed at least 175 structures, including a historic firehouse and an antiques store, in a Northern California town.
He was paroled in July 2007. During that time, he didn’t work again as a firefighter.
California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for Lake County as a result of the evacuations, and the fire’s damage to infrastructure and homes.
Blue Mountain Farms, a horse ranch in Phelan, was in the path of the fire – just as it was for another fire in the area a year ago.
A miles-long line of flames snaked along ridges, racing through chaparral that was dry as tinder after years of drought and days of dry summer heat in the 90s.
The fire erupted Tuesday and quickly grew to 1,500 acres. Television news helicopters showed some property, apparently ranch outbuildings, burning.
The fire briefly stopped a freight train on nearby tracks.
A wildfire in the mountainous Cajon (kuh-HOHN’) Pass area of Southern California has closed down two major roads and forced evacuations.
The region is under red-flag warnings for high fire danger because of gusty winds and low humidity levels.
In central California, a wildfire near Lake Nacimiento, about 180 miles northwest of Los Angeles, grew to almost 7 square miles and forced authorities to evacuate some residents by boat when it shifted toward the lake Sunday.
The U.S. Forest Service says the 12.6-square-mile blaze was 100 percent contained Tuesday.
At its height the fire posed a threat to as many as 5,300 residences but ultimately no homes were lost. But then, winds picked up and sent embers flying over firefighters heads, causing the fire to take off and turn into a structure-destroying conflagration.
Highway 1 in central California has reopened after a daylong closure for removal of fire-weakened trees north of Big Sur.
Lower Lake is home to about 1,300 mostly working class people and retirees who are drawn by its rustic charm and housing prices that are lower than the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Other than a pair of large blazes in the 1960s, which destroyed far fewer homes in a county that had just one-quarter its current 64,000 residents, lifelong resident and county supervisor Jim Comstock can’t remember anything approaching the past year.
