The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider ratifying an emergency proclamation, prompted by the Blue Cut fire, in an effort to be reimbursed for costs associated with battling the blaze and assisting victims. She was running an errand Tuesday when the fire charged through her neighborhood.
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Most of those have now been allowed to return home, though a mandatory evacuation order remains in the El Cajon Valley area. But the fire did not qualify as a federal disaster because it fell below the threshold needed for federal disaster relief funds.
That fire grew to almost 38 square miles overnight into Sunday morning and remained 35 percent contained.
A preliminary assessment found 96 homes and 213 outbuildings were destroyed by the blaze, majority in its first fierce days on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The fire sparked Tuesday was 68 percent contained and firefighters who were on the offensive for days were finally transitioning to mop-up phase, officials said.
Most of those residents are returning to find their homes intact, though not all.
Firefighters gained ground on Friday against the wildfire which has been burning in a Southern California mountain pass and has forced tens of thousands of residents to flee and destroyed about 100 homes, officials said.
More damage might still be discovered as firefighters pore through the aftermath of the fire that had burned 58 square miles about 60 miles east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County. The goal is to compile the data even before the fire is fully extinguished and make them available online, via phone recordings and on postings at evacuation centers.
Swaths of California have turned into kindling due to a prolonged drought, with six more wildfires burning in the state.
Several other wildfires continue to burn across the state.
In the southern Sierra Nevada, another blaze feeding on dense timber in Sequoia National Forest forced the evacuation of several tiny hamlets.
Pitassi says damage assessment teams have found 9 more burned homes, bringing the preliminary total to 105.
“We don’t plan on rebuilding”, she said. In San Francisco, a fire in the mountains razed 189 homes and eight businesses in Lower Lake, but has been contained. Dillon said the residents were “very pleased” to know the Lytle Creek area was open and that those still under evacuation orders were being patient.
He said the number of destroyed homes and buildings could have been much higher for such a powerful fire.
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Cal Fire spokesman Mike Yuli says a wind shift caused the fire to cross a containment line Saturday afternoon, leading authorities to issue an evacuation warning to two communities north of Lake Nacimiento, about 180 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
