Cool weather forecast offers hope in battling intense Southern California blaze

By EUGENE GARCIA and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

MOUNTAIN HOME VILLAGE, Calif — Several days of extreme temperatures have stoked a wildfire in Southern California that burned so hot it created its own thunderstorm-like weather systems, but firefighters hope to gain the upper hand as cooler weather is expected to move in after Tuesday.

The Line Fire has forced at least 6,000 people to evacuate and threatened thousands of homes and commercial structures as it burns along the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) east of Los Angeles.

“We’re dealing with triple-digit temperatures and hard-to-reach steep areas where there has not been fire in decades, or in recorded history, so all that vegetation has led to significant fuel loads,” Cal Fire spokesperson Rick Carhart said.

The conditions have limited firefighters’ ability to control the blaze, which has created the type of clouds that can spawn gusty winds and lightning strikes.

State fire managers said three firefighters have been injured since the blaze was reported Thursday.

An excessive heat warning issued for the Los Angeles area will expire Tuesday night.

As of Tuesday morning, the blaze had charred about 41 square miles (96 square kilometers) of grass and brush and blanketed the area with a thick cloud of dark smoke. It was 5% contained.

The blaze is one of many burning across the West, including in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, where about 20,000 people have had to flee a fire outside Reno.

The Line Fire is one of the most dangerous of many in California, including one north of San Francisco that destroyed more than two dozen homes and another that broke out in Orange County, southeast of Los Angeles.

Stephen Richardson, whose 1930s wooden cabin in the unincorporated community of Mountain Home Village is in the path of the Line Fire, said Monday that he installed more fire-resistant siding to the structure and trimmed some branches away from it.

“That’s about all I can do, aside from standing on the top of the roof with my garden hose, but that’s not in the plans,” Richardson said.

Southern California mountain community residents like Richardson are mulling whether to stay and protect their homes or leave. Richardson, a math and physics instructor at Platt College, said he planned to meet with his students online before deciding whether to leave the community where he was born and raised.

Mara Rodriguez, a spokesperson with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which issues evacuation orders, said nearly 5,000 homes fell under the existing orders and nearly 17,000 more were under evacuation warnings.

Running Springs resident Steven Michael King said he had planned to stay to fight the fire and help his neighbors until the fire escalated Sunday morning. He ultimately left out of fear smoke could keep him from finding a way out later.

The affected area is near small mountain towns in the San Bernardino National Forest where Southern California residents ski in the winter and mountain bike in the summer. Running Springs is on the route to the popular ski resort town of Big Bear.

Meanwhile, firefighters used bulldozers, helicopters and airplanes Monday to control another rapidly spreading blaze near a remote-controlled airplane airport in Orange County. The fire spread to about 3 square miles (8 square kilometers) in only a few hours and had charred more than 13 square miles (33 square kilometers) by Tuesday morning.