A wildfire with a ferocity never seen before by veteran California firefighters raced up and down canyons, instantly engulfing homes and forcing thousands of people to flee, some running for their lives just ahead of the flames.
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The number of destroyed structures remained at 268, including 175 single-family homes and eight commercial buildings.
The Bureau of Land Management defines a fire whirl as a “spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire and carrying aloft smoke, debris, and flame” that range from less than a foot to 500 feet in diameter. The Cornelius Fire Department captured one of the fire whirls on camera. He appeared in court Wednesday, but he did not enter a plea.
A member of a CalFire hand crew lights a back fire while fighting the Bluecut Fire, Wednesday Aug. 17, 2016 in Cajon Pass, Calif.
The blaze is the latest in a series of intense wildfires in the U.S. West, where years of drought have placed a heavy burden on firefighting resources.
A fleet of 10 air tankers and 15 helicopters and almost 1,600 firefighters are battling the blaze, according to officials.
Cathey Mattingly of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said that the evacuation orders are mandatory, as the residents are facing great danger.
Firefighters have yet to tally property losses but indicate there have been many.
Hazardous red flag weather conditions will remain in effect here until 9 p.m. Thursday night.
A bit of improvement is expected Friday, with lighter winds and some increase in relative humidity – moisture that helps suppress fire activity. “It hit with an intensity that we hadn’t seen before”, San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig said of the blaze.
Previously, officials said the fire – named after the Blue Cut hiking trail, where the ferocious wildfire began Tuesday morning for unknown reasons – was 30,000 acres, but its size was modified due to “more accurate mapping”, the San Bernardino National Forest tweeted.
Firefighters continue to try to defend communities including Wrightwood and Lytle Creek in the rugged San Gabriel Mountains above Cajon Pass.
Five years of drought have turned the state’s wildlands into a tinder box, with eight fires now burning from Shasta County in the far north to Camp Pendleton just north of San Diego.
The Blue Cut Fire in San Bernardino is burning out of control in California, causing over 80,000 evacuations and destroying homes and landmarks, with map from August 18, 2016.
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The “Blue Cut Fire”, which erupted on Tuesday in the mountainous pass northeast of Los Angeles, had exploded to cover 34,500 acres by early Thursday, growing almost 10,000 acres overnight, fire officials said.
