In Azusa, California, where the latest wildfires have begun, temperatures are expected to reach 110 degrees Tuesday afternoon, said weather.com meteorologist Brian Donegan.
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Hundreds of homes are evacuated in foothill cities below the fire, and officials say the threat remains. The East County neighborhoods of Lake Morena and Campo received their voluntary evacuation orders Tuesday. Horses are seen before they are evacuated from a ranch as a wildfire is burning along a hillside in Azusa, Calif., Monday, June 20, 2016.
Social media users tagged photos #FishFire and #ReservoirFire while two separate wildfires burned four miles apart in the mountains above the San Gabriel Valley on Monday.
Firefighting resources are being redirected to two fires in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and to a blaze east of San Diego near the Mexico border. Mandatory evacuation orders were expanded Tuesday.
The so-called Fish Fire and the Reservoir Fire, both raging in Angeles National Forest, more than doubled in size on Monday night and were entirely unconfined, the US Forest Service said in a statement.
He expected gusts of up to 25 miles per hour in the afternoon and evening, posing additional problems for hundreds of firefighters attacking the flames. John Tripp, deputy chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, advised residents to evacuate early if the flames got close, warning of clogged roads if fire crews and evacuating residents used the same thoroughfares. The Border Patrol and San Diego County Animal Services assisted with personnel and their trailers. A 28-square-mile fire that erupted last week destroyed 24 homes in the Manzano Mountains south of Albuquerque, but by Tuesday the blaze was 46 percent contained.
Falling temperatures, rising humidity and cloud cover has helped, said Capt. Kendal Bortisser of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Flare-ups continued to spark on the mountainsides above Azusa and Duarte on Wednesday as fire crews worked to increase containment of the San Gabriel Complex wildfires. Trees killed by a beetle infestation were fueling the flames 140 miles north of Denver and 2 miles from Wyoming.
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Firefighters planned to try to put in containment lines by pulling hoses and using bulldozers as aircraft dump retardant and water, said Nathan Judy, spokesman for the Angeles National Forest.
