That’s what San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig is warning after a ferocious wildfire has raged across 40 square miles.
Advertisement
The fire began near the hiking trail of the same name on Tuesday.
Firefighters had at least established a foothold of control of the blaze the day after it broke out for unknown reasons in the Cajon Pass near Interstate 15, the vital artery between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
(VVNG.com)- Firefighters are continuing to make great progress as they battle the explosive Blue Cut Fire.
The devastating Blue Cut wildfire burning east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County – that has swallowed up homes and forced mass evacuations – is now 25,626 acres with 4 percent containment, officials said Wednesday night.
Evacuations have started since Tuesday as the fire has displaced more than 82,000 residents along the San Bernardino area.
Authorities could not immediately say how many homes had been destroyed, but they warned that the number will be large.
A fast-moving wildfire that’s burned tens of thousands of acres near the Cajon Pass continues to pose an “imminent threat” to the region, but a major thoroughfare is finally partially reopened.
These factors combined with other historical trends – climate change making rain less frequent and more people living in the area and suppressing natural wildfires – produced the flawless storm for a raging wildfire, said Richard Guyette, who has studied wildfires for almost 40 years at the University of Missouri.
Firefighters battling the fast-growing fire in the Cajon Pass faced a powder keg created by mountainous terrain, excessive dry vegetation and extreme weather conditions, experts said Wednesday. “It hit with an intensity that we hadn’t seen before”.
Special helicopters equipped to fly in darkness were deployed, according to Melody Lardner, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service.
Youve got flames on the side of you.
“The smoke may completely obscure your vision to where you can’t even see the road any more because of a sudden wind shift so there are a lot of different things that could take your one route or your one route that is your safe way and compromise it”, he said. More than a thousand firefighters were working to contain the blaze but have so far found nearly no success, officials said.
Advertisement
It remains unclear how many homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed by the fire.
