The Blue Cut Fire, which started at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, has quickly become on of the most dramatic in recent times for the massive number of people forced to evacuate and how swiftly it moved across various San Bernardino mountain communities.
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The fire remained unchecked, having exploded within hours to cover an area of 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares), Cal Fire said, up from an estimate of 9,000 acres (3,640 hectares) on Tuesday evening. As San Bernardino fire erupted Tuesday just as firefighters finally began to contain a huge wildfire that had been out of control for several days in northern California. California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in the county to free up state funds and other aid.
More than 34,000 homes and some 82,000 people were under evacuation warnings as firefighters concentrated their efforts on saving homes in the mountain communities of Lytle Creek, Wrightwood and Phelan. Firefighters battle the Bluecut Fire along Swarthout Canyon Road in the Cajon Pass, north of San Bernardino, Calif., Tuesday Aug. 16, 2016.
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 high summer temperatures, which approached triple digits in some locations, helped to drive the fire’s explosive growth, according to Bob Poole, a San Bernardino National Forest protection officer.
Police have arrested a suspect, Damin Anthony Pashilk, 40, and are holding him on multiple charges of arson. “It went from “have you heard there’s a fire?’ to ‘mandatory evacuation” before you could take it all in”. Both the Valley fire, which burned 76,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes, and the Rocky fire, which torched 69,000 acres and destroyed 43 homes, were caused by home gas and electrical problems, officials said.
Another evacuated resident, John Goodfried, told KNBC he watched air tankers flying missions over the blaze.
The fire is at zero percent containment.
“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.
The wildfire was started amid extremely hot, dry conditions and low humidity, making the battle more hard for firefighters. The line stretches along the southwest section between Lower Lake and Clearlake, said Paul Lowenthal, a Santa Rosa assistant fire marshal who is working as a public information officer for the fire. They have so far mastered 35% of the blaze, according to Cal Fire.
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The fire destroyed blocks of homes in some areas and in other neighborhoods, firefighters were able to save homes while next-door residences burned.
