Juliet Kinikin said Sunday that “there was panic” as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area of Los Angeles County. The wind pattern that initially fed the blaze began to shift Sunday, with a sea breeze blowing toward the north for much of the afternoon, then reversing about 9 p.m. The erratic shift in winds pushed the fire northeast toward Acton, where evacuations were ordered Sunday.
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About 480 kilometres up the coast, crews were fighting another fire spanning more than 41 square kilometres and forcing evacuations outside the scenic Big Sur region.
The Southern California blaze has blackened more than 88 square kilometres of brush near the city of Santa Clarita, and the authorities found a burned body in a auto.
The fire, burning in the Santa Clarita area not far north of Los Angeles and known as the Sand Fire by firefighters, sparked on Friday and had ballooned to nearly 9,000 hectares in size by Sunday afternoon.
During a sweep of the burn area Saturday night, firefighters found a man’s body.
Planes have been unable to make drops over the fire, but helicopters are releasing retardant around the perimeter of the blaze.
Winds of up to 20 miles per hour, as well as hillsides carpeted with dry brush from years of drought, helped fuel the fire’s rapid growth, which as of Monday morning is only ten percent contained.
In the last decade or so, Tripp said there have been three major fires in Sand Canyon, including the Station fire, which burned more than 200 homes and claimed the lives of two Los Angeles County firefighters in 2009.
Lois Wash, 87, said she and her daughter and her dog evacuated, but her husband refused.
“I’m still at work and trying to get a hold of this fire (the Sand Fire), trying to protect the other structures that are around the area”, Toscano told KABC. I don’t know if our house is still standing or not. “All we can do is pray”. According to the sheriff’s department, the cause of the man’s death has not been determined, and an investigation is underway. However, according to the Orange County Register, almost 45,000 homes near the San Fernando Valley may be threatened soon if there is “extreme fire behavior”.
Despite the efforts of the fire department, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings that are used for film locations.
“I hope I don’t have to rebuild my house”, he told the Monterey Herald.
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It also forced a sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion.
