Dramatic footage captured by firefighters in California, Oregon and Colorado shows crews battling to tackle the phenomenon, also known as “fire whirls”, whipped up when rising heat combines with turbulent winds.
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It remains unclear how many homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed by the fire.
State transit officials said northbound lanes of Interstate 15, a highway from Los Angeles and Las Vegas which was closed earlier in the week, would reopen in the area by the end of the day.
It’s the first good news for residents since authorities put more than 34,000 homes and 82,000 people under evacuation warnings in the region 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
“It’s just stuff”, he said of his possessions.
The blaze quickly surged Thursday to about 500 acres and prompted the evacuation of a public campground and a camp for boys.
Another blaze near Lake Isabella in Kern and Tulare counties in the center of the state had burned more than two square miles.
Some eight fires are reportedly now burning from Shasta Country in the far north of the state to Camp Pendelton, situated north of San Diego. Although, there have been no deaths reported, cadaver dogs have been used to search the ruins to discover anybody who may have been overrun by the fire.
“We have very, very dry brush – thick fuel – it helps move it (the fire) along very quickly”, said Ms Lynne Tolmachoff, spokesman for the state firefighting agency Cal Fire. “This fire is just that risky – anything that’s smoking, once it gets hot throughout the day – has the potential to carry embers over to unburned fuel”.
“When it gets up to 100, 110 degrees and you’re in close proximity to the fire, it’s extremely challenging, it’s mentally and physically exhausting”, said Famiglietti.
Wildfires across the country in recent years have grown more ferocious and expensive to fight.
The fire that broke out Tuesday in the Cajon Pass near Interstate 15 east of Los Angeles has now burned 56 square miles. It was also the costliest on record with $2.1 billion spent to fight fires from Alaska to Florida.
Much of the fire was burning across unpopulated swaths of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, but Wrightwood and several adjacent communities were being threatened.
All hands were on deck Thursday in an effort to contain the blazing fires – more than 1,500 firefighters responded to the Blue Cut fire, which has burned through 31,600 acres in Cajon Pass, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The fire unleashed its initial fury on a semi-rural landscape dotted with small ranches and homes in Cajon Pass and on the edge of the Mojave Desert before climbing the mountains.
Travel was returning to normal in the pass – a major corridor for trucking, rail and commuter traffic – after Interstate 15 was fully reopened.
In mountains north of San Francisco, fire crews gained more ground on a wildfire as damage inspectors surveyed the area to determine how many structures were destroyed or damaged.
The equipment manager of the U.S. Olympic fencing team was among those who lost their homes to a Northern California wildfire.
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Matthew Porter, the so-called armorer for the team, had bought the house in the small rural community of Lower Lake just days before he left to accompany the team to the games in Rio. The 40-year-old construction worker appeared in court Wednesday, but he did not enter a plea.
