This brought to 22,000 acres – or 34 square miles – the total area enveloped by the wildfire, which has forced hundreds of evacuations and is casting a dark haze over parts of Southern California.
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Residents of thousands of homes were evacuated as shifting winds were pushing flames northeast through Angeles National Forest, authorities said.
But firefighters on Tuesday afternoon will be laboring in above average heat of 102 degrees Fahrenheit (39 degrees Celsius) and low humidity, National Weather Service specialist Stuart Seto said.
The wildfire has torn through more than 58 square miles of dry brush, burned 18 homes and temporarily displaced about 20,000 people in Santa Clarita.
The U.S. Forest Service said in a statement that residents from all but two evacuated neighborhoods can return at 7 p.m. Monday.
Eighteen residences have been destroyed in the blaze that started Saturday and quickly tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn’t burned in decades.
By Monday, about 10 percent of Santa Clarita’s 200,000 residents had been ordered out of their homes as erratic winds stoked the blaze.
“This is the fifth year of an ongoing drought, so we have very extreme fire behavior”, Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Daryl Osby told reporters Sunday according to Reuters. The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued a smoke advisory until midnight tonight for portions of the Santa Clarita Valley and the San Gabriel Mountains.
“We always knew the potential was there because the fuel is old”, he said.
“This will provide the reimbursements for firefighting personnel because we have personnel from all over California in the Santa Clarita Valley and Antelope Valley fighting this fire”, said County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.
By comparison, the 2003 Cedar Fire ranks as the biggest on record in the state. “So, our home luckily still stands but to see the flames the way that they did, they wiped out the whole valley”, he said.
Meanwhile, officials at the Lange Foundation said Monday that their St. Bonnie’s Sanctuary in Canyon Country, a facility for dogs, cats and horses, was evacuated, and the foundation is looking for people willing to temporarily foster more than 80 cats and 40 dogs.
Almost 3,000 firefighters were trying to put out the Santa Clarita blaze.
A fire fighter looks out of the burning hillside as they continue to battle the so-called Sand Fire in the Angeles National Forest near Los Angeles, California, United States, July 25, 2016.
Police are investigating the death of a badly charred unidentified man, found in a vehicle parked in the driveway of a house in the fire zone. He doesn’t know if he will have a house when he goes back.
Brock Bradford lives in a historic house in Palo Colorado, one of the evacuated areas, and could see the flames coming down the road as he fled.
California’s central coast continued to burn Tuesday as the Soberanes fire was only 10 percent contained ― with no end in sight.
Homeowners on Iron Canyon Road, which branches off Sand Canyon and where two homes were destroyed Saturday, told The Signal separately that the fire came “ripping” into their neighborhood.
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“I hope I don’t have to rebuild my house”, he told the Monterey Herald.
