No, it wasn’t a sign of the apocalypse.
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The worst of the smoke moved directly southeast from Santa Clarita, hovering above the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, officials said.
The Sand fire was reported Friday afternoon and is still only 10 percent contained, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The Sand fire roared primarily through uninhabited areas near the 14 Freeway much of Saturday, fueled by high winds and hillsides carpeted with tinderlike chaparral.
Across the city, Angelenos looked up and captured the eerie phenomenon with their cameras.
At a press conference Saturday, officials said the wind is expected to shift in the afternoon from a northwest to a southwest direction, which may threaten the community of Sand Canyon.
“Those residents have to be watching the weather, watching the media, and have to be ready to evacuate”, said Los Angeles County Fire Department Deputy Chief John Tripp. In addition, law enforcement officials are investigating the death of a man found Saturday in a burned auto outside a home in the fire zone.
A firefighter hoses down burning pipes near a water tank at the Sand Fire, July 23 2016 near Santa Clarita, California. Shifting winds were pushing flames northeast through Angeles National Forest, where additional evacuations were ordered in the city of Acton and other residents were warned to prepare to leave, authorities said. The blaze, whose cause is under investigation, sent up a huge plume of smoke visible across the region.
Eighteen homes were gutted and one was damaged on Saturday in the Santa Clarita area, where evacuations were ordered as flames raged through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures in a Southern California heat wave.
About 300 miles up the coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled a almost 3-square-mile blaze in rugged mountains north of the majestic Big Sur region.
Firefighters were battling the 22,000-acre blaze in the 26700 block of Iron Canyon Road in the Santa Clarita area when they found the remains inside a burned small compact sedan around 7:20 p.m., a sheriff’s news release said.
If you were in the Los Angeles area on Saturday and looked up into the sky, you might have thought there was a storm rolling in, or that the bright, glowing red sun was an omen for Armageddon. It burned in inaccessible terrain 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park and forced the communities of Palo Colorado and Carmel Highlands to evacuate, California’s forestry department said. “I grabbed all the pictures of the kids and then I took the paintings of my parents that had been done by a local artist”.
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The blaze is being battled by 300 firefighters from Los Angeles County and the Angeles National Forest as well as a fleet of helicopters and airplanes.
