He said he had seen all kinds of things burn, including the Summit Inn, a historic diner near I-15, he said.
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The fire disrupted the first day of school for many in the region.
– ReutersA deer statue stands amid the remains of a home in a neighborhood destroyed by the Clayton Fire at Lower Lake in California August 16, 2016.
Authorities issued evacuation orders for 82,640 residents and about 34,500 homes near the main freeway between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area, a stretch of which was closed indefinitely. Wind pushed flames through the hills and toward residential communities tucked into the forest, he said.
Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass was closed on August 16 because a fast-moving wildland fire burned about 9,000 acres in the mountains north of Fontana, according to the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
“It’s bewildering”, said Char Miller, a professor at Pomona College who researches wildfires. One fire truck sustained moderate fire damage while the firefighters were entrapped. This is in big measure because we’re in a deep drought.
Tens of thousands of homes are at risk from the so-called Bluecut fire.
Caltrans is advising oversize and large vehicles such as buses, RVs and semi trucks not to use Highways 18 and 138 and other mountain roads as an alternate through the San Bernardino Mountains. Initial estimates from the U.S. Forest Service put the number above 80,000.
Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for San Bernardino County in response to the Blue Cut fire. The fire burned an engine.
Lake County District Attorney Don Anderson said Tuesday he couldn’t speak about the Clayton Fire case because investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection hadn’t yet provided him the documents that detail their allegations.
By Tuesday evening, 82,000 residents were under mandatory evacuations and Gov. “He’s OK now, but we’re keeping an eye on the situation”, Mr. Boyd said. “We’ve got a lovely community”. “With any arsonist it’s very hard to understand why – All we know is, this is behavior we do not tolerate”, Berlant said. “These kinds of serial arson cases are incredibly complex”, Upton said.
So he went down his checklist, shutting off the gas, closing windows and laying out hoses and ladders for firefighters to use. “Luckily, we’re here as a group so we can still have a good time and make the best of the situation”. “Our investigation will continue to run through additional fires that we had in this area”, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for Cal Fire. “Fire crews were dispatched”.
Snow said he was watching an NBC4 live stream of the fire as flames surrounded Hockaday’s house in Cajon Pass and reached out to the newsroom who contacted dispatch to get rescuers to Hockaday’s location in a canyon called Lost Lake.
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Television footage captured a fire tornado, more accurately known as a fire whirl, a phenomenon in which flames and gusts combine to form whirling eddies. Temperatures in San Bernardino are expected to be over 100 degrees Wednesday.
