Crews make major gains against Southern California wildfire

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. – Lisa Gregory has kept a close eye on the weather since fleeing her home in the woods as a wildfire advanced in Southern California. She doesn’t know when she can return or whether her house was still standing.

Windswept flames from the wildfire rise above a fire truck on Cajon Boulevard in Keenbrook, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The uncertainty “is an awful feeling,” Gregory said as she lounged in a lawn chair under a tree outside an evacuation centre.

Firefighters made major gains Thursday against the wildfire that broke out Tuesday in the mountains and desert 60 miles east of Los Angeles. Driven by wind, the fire chewed through tall grasses and drought-parched shrubs, torching an unknown number of homes and vehicles.

The blaze covering nearly 58 square miles was 26 per cent contained by early Friday, and plans were in the works to begin demobilizing some of the nearly 1,600 firefighters by afternoon.

“Crews really buttoned up some areas. But the possibility is still there for explosive growth,” fire spokesman Brad Pitassi said.

Wildfire in San Bernardino, California forces over 82,000 people to evacuate. pic.twitter.com/WjfdLqzv53

— CCTV (@CCTV) August 20, 2016

That concern was especially focused on an area southeast of the mountain town of Wrightwood where old- growth brush and trees haven’t burned in 70 years, fire behaviour analyst Brendan Ripley said.

Elsewhere, the fire’s growth was limited because the land had become a moonscape.

“The fire burned so intensely that there’s no fuels left for it to move again,” Pitassi said.

A small number of evacuees have been allowed to return home, but Pitassi could not say when all evacuations would be lifted. Some 82,000 residents were under evacuation orders at the height of the fire.

Latest map of #BlueCutFire areas burned, under evacuation orders. Fire at 30,000 acres with 0 containment. pic.twitter.com/PPRIaoidSK

— Janice Rutherford-Lim (@JanRutherfordCA) August 17, 2016

Long-awaited damage assessments were expected to be released Friday afternoon, he said.

Charmy Hartinger said it has been a “roller coaster” since she got off work and realized she couldn’t go home. After staying in a hotel with her sister, she arrived at the evacuation centre to join her neighbour.

“I just want to know if I have a house,” she said.

Related: Wildfire roars into California town, driving out thousands

Meanwhile, a new fire broke out in rural Santa Barbara County, quickly surging to about 600 acres and prompting the evacuation of a pair of campgrounds.

In the southern Sierra Nevada, another blaze feeding on dense timber in Sequoia National Forest exploded to nearly 15 square miles. Tiny hamlets in Kern and Tulare counties were evacuated.

During five years of drought, California’s wildlands have seen a continuous streak of destructive and sometimes deadly fires. No deaths have been reported in the latest fire, but crews assessing property damage were using cadaver dogs during searches.

The dry vegetation is like firewood, said fire information officer Sean Collins.

“It burns that much quicker, that much hotter. The rate of travel is extremely fast,” he said.

#BlueCutFire: Damage from the #wildfire which is burning in San Bernardino county,
photo by @crimeshutterbug pic.twitter.com/zSX0uuXpna

— BreakingNewsHQ1 (@BreakingNewsHQ1) August 17, 2016

Wildfires across the country in recent years have grown more ferocious and expensive to fight.

Last year’s fire season set a record with more than 15,625 square miles of land charred. It was also the costliest on record with $2.1 billion spent to fight fires from Alaska to Florida.

Experts have blamed several factors including rising temperatures that more quickly dry out forests and vegetation. Decades of aggressively knocking down small fires also have led to the buildup of flammable fuel. On top of that, more people are moving into fire-prone regions, complicating firefighting efforts.

The Southern California fire unleashed its initial fury on a semi-rural landscape dotted with small ranches and homes in Cajon Pass and on the edge of the Mojave Desert before climbing the mountains.

This picture highlights how intense the #BlueCutFire is. Thankful for the unified commands efforts. pic.twitter.com/ABmGNQMKJW

— CHP Southern (@CHPsouthern) August 17, 2016

Travel was returning to normal in the pass – a major corridor for trucking, rail and commuter traffic – after Interstate 15 was fully reopened.

In mountains north of San Francisco, a 6-square-mile blaze was 55 per cent contained after destroying at least 268 structures, including 175 homes and eight businesses, in the working-class community of Lower Lake.

The equipment manager, or “armourer” of the U.S. Olympic fencing team, was among those who lost their homes. Matthew Porter was in Rio with the medal-winning team when the house burned.

Associated Press writers John Antczak, Amanda Lee Myers and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles and Kristin Bender and Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco contributed to this report.