California wildfires

[Shrek 0]

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - Powerful Santa Ana winds kicked up before dawn Sunday, driving two ferocious firestorms that had burned more than 300 homes into dozens more houses in the San Bernardino suburbs and forcing thousands of residents to flee.

 

  

 

Another wildfire, father south in San Diego County, was blamed in the deaths of two people who became trapped in a car as they tried to escape the flames.

 

 

The two wildfires raging in the suburbs of San Bernardino, a city of 185,000 about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, appeared to merge on Sunday into one long fire front, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Carol Beckley said.

 

 

Burning together, she said, that fire front would be 35 to 40 miles long.

 

 

At the western end, about 50 homes were in flames Sunday morning in a canyon at the edge of the suburb of Claremont, and authorities were going street to street there and in La Verne, urging people to evacuate immediately.

 

 

Several evacuation centers had opened in the area and thousands of people had left their homes, said Los Angeles County fire Inspector Edward Osorio.

 

 

"We're not sure exactly how many burned because we can't get up there," Osorio said. "Our priority of the moment right now is structure protection, not containment."

 

 

In all, the fires had blackened tens of thousands of acres. Fire incident commanders on Sunday also raised their estimate of homes burned in Saturday in the suburbs just north of San Bernardino from 200 to 300 but still couldn't get close enough for complete count, fire spokesman Greg Cleveland said.

 

 

Gov. Gray Davis (news - web sites) declared a state of emergency for San Bernardino and Ventura counties late Saturday.

 

 

"We are taking every possible step to support the firefighting effort," Davis said. He said he called on President Bush (news - web sites) to issue a disaster declaration to free up federal loan money for people who lost homes.

 

 

The winds had died down as the temperature dropped over night but they picked up again early Sunday, sending authorities rushing to evacuate hundreds more homes in the resort areas of Lake Arrowhead and Crestline, just north of San Bernardino.

 

 

Gabriel Garcia of the San Bernardino National Forest's fire suppression agency said firefighters he talked to Sunday morning were not optimistic they could save all the homes in the blaze's path.

 

 

"First thing they said is they're getting their butts kicked," Garcia said. "They're saving a lot but they can't save it all."

 

 

About 100 miles to the northwest, in Ventura County, other wildfires were raging early Sunday in the hills above Simi Valley's Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) Presidential Library and near Piru, where 300 homes were threatened for a time. The Simi Valley fire had burned 47,000 acres by daybreak, damaged 14 homes and was threatening as many as 2,000 structures. It had also shut down Highway 118, the main route connecting Ventura County to Los Angeles.

 

 

In San Diego County, three wildfires were burning, including one that had destroyed seven homes in a neighborhood of estates near Ramona, Sheriff's Department spokesman Chris Saunders said. The fire, which forced hundreds of people to evacuate, started when a lost hunter set off a signal fire to get attention, Saunders said. The man could face charges.

 

 

Two people believed to have been trying to escape the flames were found dead in a car, said Alice Contreras of the California Highway Patrol. Another fire in San Diego County destroyed about 20 homes near Valley Center and blackened about 1,000 acres Sunday.

 

 

The most devastating of the wildfires started Saturday in San Bernardino's Old Waterman Canyon, about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

 

  

 

 

 

Fierce Santa Ana winds propelled the flames across 12,000 acres within hours as erratic winds gusting to 40 mph pushed the blaze in constantly changing directions. By Sunday morning, officials estimate, 300 homes had burned.

 

The fire forced the evacuation of the San Manuel Indian Reservation's casino and the campus of California State University, San Bernardino, where flames damaged two temporary classrooms and a temporary fitness center. Patton State Hospital, which houses about 1,300 mental patients, also had to be evacuated.

 

Two firefighters suffered second degree burns, and at least three others suffered minor burns or smoke inhalation on Sunday.

 

More than 4,200 people had been ordered to leave their homes in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains, although some refused, staying behind to spray water on their roofs with garden hoses as flames danced all around them.

 

Robert Wilkes turned his hose on burning palm trees in an effort to keep the flames from his home and his neighbor's until he finally had to leave.

 

"He saved our house," said neighbor Dwane Caddell. Much of the rest of Caddell's property was damaged, however. His swimming pool was black with debris and singed palm trees and shrubbery surrounded the house.

 

The San Bernardino County coroner's office blamed the deaths of two men on stress caused by the fire. James W. McDermith, 70, collapsed while evacuating his home, and Charles Cunningham, 93, collapsed as he stood in the street watching his house burn.

 

The fires closed highways, cut power to thousands and choked the region with heavy smoke and ash.

 

Evacuation centers were packed, including one near San Bernardino International Airport, where as many as 1,000 people gathered, including about 50 people in wheelchairs who were taken from a convalescent home.

 

Hundreds of people sat beside their cars in the parking lot, some watching the burning hills through binoculars.

 

One family gathered in a prayer circle. Dozens of caged dogs and cats evacuated by their owners lined the roads. Authorities said at least three people were arrested on suspicion of looting in the devastated area.

 

Sharon Robinson, 62, and her daughter Kim Robinson, 46, left with their clothes and other belongings in the back of their truck.

 

"We've lived in our home for 35 years," Sharon Robinson said. "Fire has always stopped in the foothills. I never thought it would reach our home."

 

 

 

For more info go to http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ornia_wildfires

Edited October 26, 2003 by shrek

[Stardreamer 1]

Heard about that on the news this evening. Hopefully no one of us is concerned.

[Son_worshiper 0]

I live in California,and have been reading about the fires,and watching news updates for 2 days now.Its not a concern for me,as I do not live in southern California and have no relatives there.Its an unfortunate tragedy,nonetheless.

[8247 0]

I just heard that the Monday Night Football game between my Dolphins, and the Chargers could be re located to San Francisco or Phoenix because the parking lot of San Diego's stadium is being used as an evacuation center for victims.

Doesnt matter where it is. Miami Wins!!!

[BakulaBabe 2]

My husband and I live in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California, but we're far enough away to only get three things - ash, ash, and ash. It doesn't take long outside to get a real snootfull, so we won't be doing much yardwork for a while!

Edited October 27, 2003 by incontinentia

[8247 0]

I lived in Florida in 1998, when the wild fires burnt most of the state. They got very close to where I lived. It was a very scary time. It was even scarier when a peice of burning ash fluttered past your face.

[A l t e r E g o 9]

Heard about that on the news this evening. Hopefully no one of us is concerned.

:angry: Safe and sound so far.

 

We are about 20 miles from the closest fire line but are ready to go if the need to arises. Currently, locally, we are getting a lot of ash fallout and smoke has been blotting out the sun (or causing to appear blood red) for two days.

 

Reportedly, 250,000 acres (from total of 5 separate fronts) are being said to have burned in TWO days!

 

At least 3 areas that are closer to the fires than we are is still getting orders to evacuate their homes (over 250 lost so far) and saddest of all, at least 14 deaths have been reported (due to disobedience of orders to leave.)

 

A couple of the cities freeways are still closed (down from 2/3 closed yesterday so there is improvement,) all city offices and most schools are closed except some middle schools that have been set up as daycare centers for non-city employees which could not get the day off. (M & Jem are home)

 

The game tonight has been moved out of state because the stadium is now the largest evacuation sanctuary in the city.

[Shrek 0]

Heard about that on the news this evening. Hopefully no one of us is concerned.

:angry: Safe and sound so far.

 

We are about 20 miles from the closest fire line but are ready to go if the need to arises. Currently, locally, we are getting a lot of ash fallout and smoke has been blotting out the sun (or causing to appear blood red) for two days.

 

I live in San Diego and I'm 15-25 miles from one,But i can see alot of smoke in the sky.

[trekzone 0]

good luck to anyone in the Californian area, im watching it on the news......how about how close it came to "24"'s set!?

 

again good luck to anyone!

[Shrek 0]

Update

 

 

LOS ANGELES - Firefighters beat back flames that had threatened hundreds of homes Tuesday in northwest Los Angeles, but to the south, a fire official said his exhausted crews were being pulled off the lines even if it means more homes will burn. 

 

 

Amid one of the most destructive and deadly wildfire outbreaks in California history, two major blazes were threatening to merge and destroy more homes in San Diego County. Even so, some firefighters were being pulled off lines there to rest.

 

 

"They're so fatigued that despite the fact the fire perimeter might become much larger, we're not willing to let the firefighters continue any further," said Rich Hawkins, a Forest Service fire chief.

 

 

"It's like war. This whole fire has been a war so far."

 

 

At least 17 deaths were blamed on the fires, 15 in Southern California and two in Mexico, as separate blazes were scattered along an arc from the suburbs northwest of Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, about 60 miles south of the border. At last count, 1,137 homes had been destroyed in California.

 

 

More than 512,000 acres of brush, forest and homes — or about 800 square miles, roughly three-quarters the total area of Rhode Island — had burned in California.

 

 

"It's a worst-case scenario. You couldn't have written anything worse than this. You can dream up horror movies, and they wouldn't be this bad," said Gene Zimmerman, supervisor of the San Bernardino National Forest, where two of the most destructive fires began last week.

 

 

Crews battling the Simi Valley fire in the Santa Susana Mountains, which separate the northwest corner of Los Angeles from Simi Valley in neighboring Ventura County, had feared they could lose hundreds of homes in the Chatsworth section.

 

 

"They saved every one of them," said Bill Peters, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry.

 

 

Firefighters went driveway to driveway in the Chatsworth area, which extends up the Santa Susana slopes from the city's San Fernando Valley, and turned back the flames before dawn, Peters said.

 

 

The fire teams were aided by calmer weather that included increased humidity, lower temperatures and a break from the Santa Ana wind that had gusted up to 70 mph earlier in the week. The hot, dry Santa Ana blows from the high desert down to the sea at this time of year.

 

 

South of the Los Angeles area, however, conditions were grim in San Diego County, where ash from three large fires fell on the beaches like snow.

 

 

Two of them, the Cedar fire and the Paradise fire, were just two miles apart Tuesday morning and likely would merge within hours into a super fire, Hawkins said.

 

 

"There's blocks of homes that are going to burn to the ground this afternoon, in my opinion," Hawkins said. "My objective is to make sure there's nobody in them ... so that you and I aren't talking tomorrow about the 38 people that died."

 

 

Hawkins said that lunches intended for firefighters on Monday weren't delivered until Tuesday morning and there was a shortage of diesel fuel in some cases.

 

 

More than 10,000 firefighters were battling the flames, which by Tuesday had already cost the state more than $24 million.

 

 

More resources were on the way from Arizona and Nevada, which each volunteered the use of 50 fire trucks, and Nevada also was sending three helicopters.

 

 

 

 

 

Crews east of Los Angeles lost 20 buildings during the night in the Strawberry Peak section of the San Bernardino National Forest. They couldn't immediately say if the structures, near Lake Arrowhead, were homes or outbuildings.

 

The Strawberry Peak area was hit by a combination of two fires that had merged into one during the weekend. One, the Old Fire, started Saturday and had destroyed at least 450 homes and been blamed for two deaths. It was 10 percent contained Tuesday. The other, the Grand Prix Fire, which was 35 percent contained, had destroyed at least 77 homes since it started on Oct. 21.

 

Lake Arrowhead, at an elevation of 5,100 feet, was particularly vulnerable because a beetle infestation has devastated trees in the area.

 

Some of the fires were believed started by arsonists. Investigators sought two men who were seen throwing flaming objects from a van in the area of the Old Fire.

 

A lost hunter's signal flare ignited the so-called Cedar Fire near the mountain town of Julian in San Diego County on Saturday. That fire killed 11 people; the hunter may face charges, authorities said.

 

On Monday, President Bush (news - web sites) declared the region a disaster area, opening the door to grants, loans and other aid to residents and businesses in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties.

 

Scores of people have been injured by this week's fires. Two people at the University of California, San Diego, Medical Center were in serious to critical condition with burns over more than 55 percent of their bodies, spokeswoman Eileen Callahan said.

 

The fires also knocked out power to tens of thousands of people, closed highways and disrupted air travel.

 

 

for more info go to http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...a_wildfires_127