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Evacuated residents can go to Hart High School at 24825 N. Newhall Ave.in Santa Clarita, or Lakeview Terrace Recreation Center at 11075 Foothill Blvd.in Lake View Terrace. A wildfire north of Los Angeles has now burned about 2.3 square miles of bone-dry hillside. No structures were immediately threatened.
Fire crews in California are struggling to contain a wildfire that has destroyed 18 homes and threatens hundreds of others in mountains north of Los Angeles.
About 300 miles up the coast, crews are battling another blaze spanning 16 square miles north of the Big Sur region.
Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for 1,500 residents of the Santa Clarita area, in Los Angeles County near the Angeles National Forest, as the fire tore through rugged canyon neighborhoods.
Almost 1,700 firefighters have helped fight the blaze, but it was only 10% contained, the fire department said in an update at 8 a.m. Pacific.
The Los Angeles Fire Department sent a water-dropping helicopter to assist in the firefight and fixed-wing firefighting aircraft were summoned.
“It’s not a one-direction type of fire”, Judy said. “We have to stick back, let it do what it wants to and attack it where we can”.
The evacuations are mainly for homes in the Santa Clarita Valley area but an unknown number of homes in Acton were placed under an evacuation order Sunday afternoon.
“And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house”, she said.
Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds.
Although Kellar is concerned, he also said he is very confident and very appreciative of everyone who is making an effort to stop the fire from spreading and from burning down homes.
The blaze has forced the closure of a 40-mile stretch of State Route 14, known as the Antelope Valley Freeway.
Shifting winds are sending smoke from the fire away from greater Los Angeles and into desert communities, where residents are being warned about poor air quality.
The area where the body was found was among those ordered evacuated as the fire raged through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures as Southern California sweltered through a heat wave.
The smoke and flames from the Sand Fire can be seen for miles. The death was under investigation, but there was no evidence it was a crime, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said.
The fire already destroyed Old West-style buildings used for movie locations at the Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita. It also forced a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion.
Volunteers showed up with trucks and trailers and evacuated animals from early Friday to late Saturday, when fire officials felt the blaze was no longer a threat to the Wildlife Waystation in Sylmar, spokesman Jerry Brown said.
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“Things got in alignment yesterday and that fire came through like a freight train”, said Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp, of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. You look around the house and you say, as much as you love those beautiful plates and those things on the wall, what’s really the most valuable thing?
