Fire authorities say one person has died in the fire, more than 18 homes have burned and 20,000 residents had been evacuated from their homes.
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As of Tuesday night, some 3,000 firefighters hacked through dense brush and chaparral and had extended containment lines around 25 percent of the fire, which has charred 59 square miles since Friday, officials said.
Three of the scorched homes belonged to firefighters.
“We don’t have a large fire front”, Nathan Judy, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said of the blaze in and around the Santa Clarita Valley and the Angeles National Forest.
“We’ve had deputies and officers nearly run over by people trying to get into their homes” after roads were closed, he said.
Officials issued an advisory for unhealthy air quality conditions in the area, as smoke blew into the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. The wildfire broke out Friday afternoon and enveloped 33,172 acres by Sunday evening. Ash rained down and red skies became the backdrop for hundreds of mandatory evacuations.
The coroner’s office identified a man whose burned body was found in a vehicle in the driveway of a house in the burn area – and who apparently refused orders to evacuate the area.
On the morning of Tuesday, July 26 the LA County Board declared a local state of emergency due to the fire.
Among the properties to go up in flames was the landmark Sable Ranch, a popular location for television and movie shoots.
In Los Angeles County, the lone fatality in the Sand Fire has been identified as Robert Bresnick, 67, whose body was found Saturday inside a burned-out auto in a driveway, said Ed Winter, assistant chief Los Angeles County coroner. Train service was operating between Via Princessa and downtown Los Angeles only, Metrolink officials said.
Two major wildfires in California are causing evacuations and closures as firefighters battle the blazes.
Representatives from the U.S. Forest Service, county fire personnel and county sheriff’s officials were organizing response efforts, according to the release. “I don’t know if he got out of there or not”.
Three firefighters lost their homes in the fire.
Helicopters circled the blaze, dousing flames with water.
A week of triple digit temperatures awaited the army of some 3,000 firefighters battling flames in rugged hills and canyons. The degree of devastation may vary for every individual fire, but the failure to fully prepare for them lies at the feet of the economic system which mandates budget cuts and makes impossible a rational allocation of resources to fight them.
Authorities said they had managed to contain 25 per cent of the area, meaning the flames there had been isolated and were not expected to spread. Onshore winds gusting up to 30 miles per hour heightened fire concerns in the area Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
Most of the evacuated residents were permitted to return home Monday night, with the exception of a stretch of Little Tujunga Canyon Road from the Wildlife Way Station to Sand Canyon Road, Placerita Canyon Road from Running Horse Land to Pacy Street and Agua Dulce Canyon Road from the 14 Freeway and Soledad Canyon Road.
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About a dozen exotic animals displaced by the blaze began returning to a sanctuary in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar on Wednesday.
