Fire crews spray water over the remains of burned homes in Lower Lake on August 16, 2016.
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Two firefighters were trapped by flames in the effort to evacuate residents and defend homes, but managed to escape with only minor injuries, fire officials said.
Authorities could not immediately say how many homes had been destroyed, but they warned that the number will be large.
And the fire is zero percent contained. The size of the fire is roughly 28 square miles.
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.
The blaze first ignited on Tuesday in a drought-ravaged mountain pass and a day later it had spread across almost 47 square miles (12,200 hectares). In just a day’s time, the fire has morphed into a searing inferno, the likes of which officials haven’t seen in decades.
“In my 40 years of fighting fire, I’ve never seen fire behavior so extreme as it was yesterday”, Michael Wakoski, the incident commander on the fire, said Wednesday.
Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant says residents were able to return home in portions of Lower Lake, a town of 1,300 people where the fire destroyed 175 homes and other structures.
More than 175 buildings have been destroyed as the blaze moves aggressively to the north.
A sign at the entrance of Main Street in Lower Lake is splattered with red fire retardant from fire crews working to combat the Clayton Fire.
On July 27, Pashilk allegedly attempted to start a fire near the Holiday Island mobile-home park in Clearlake. The lawyer urged people to remember his client is presumed innocent.
Pashilk is suspected of starting many fires in Lake County in Northern California, most recently the Clayton fire, which began Saturday and has so far burned more than 4,000 acres.
His lawyer has not returned calls seeking comment.
Ash fell on motorists from billowing black smoke, while aerial pictures from NBC Los Angeles captured a roadside “firenado” in which swirling gusts of wind sent flames twisting high into the air.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said a 98-year-old hospice patient was evacuated by helicopter from the Wrightwood area to the north of the wildfire.
People who may be sensitive to air pollution, including young children, elderly people and those with respiratory problems, are encouraged to stay indoors.
By Wednesday, greater stretches of California Highway 138 and Interstate 15, the major route between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, were closed. More than 10,000 firefighters are on board battling the flames, which seemingly stretch across the entirety of the Golden State - from the Summit Fire in Humboldt County, to the Blue Cut Fire underway in the San Bernardino Mountains.
The fire has consumed almost 47 square miles in Cajon Pass, a critical highway and rail corridor through mountain ranges that separate major population centers from the Mojave Desert. He is due in court Wednesday.
Fire officials say the blaze 60 miles east of Los Angeles has scorched almost 47 square miles as of Wednesday morning, up from 28 square miles Tuesday night.
The blaze erupted late Tuesday morning in Cajon Pass and has grown rapidly. The wildfire poses “imminent threat to public safety, rail traffic and structures”, according to the website, which said 82,640 people fell under an evacuation warning.
Wrightwood, a tourist resort surrounded by pine trees in the San Gabriel Mountains, feels like it is besieged by fire.
A state of emergency has been declared in California as firefighters try to contain a wildfire that has destroyed homes over a 30,000-acre area (Boer Deng writes).
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LOS ANGELES (AP) What began as a small brush fire along a freeway in drought-stricken Southern California morphed into a massive blaze fueled by gusty winds and dry vegetation.
