Wildfire near Los Angeles forces evacuations, threatens homes

SANTA CLARITA - Wildfires tore through tinder-dry brush in California on Friday, forcing evacuations as the southern region sweltered under triple-digit temperatures.

About 100 homes and a recreational vehicle park were evacuated after an afternoon fire erupted in the dry brown hills of Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles.

“I got all my tenants out of the RV park and for the people that weren’t there and still have dogs, I broke into their trailers and got their dogs out,” Kurtis Bell, manager of River’s End RV Park, told KCAL-TV.

Driven by 20-mph winds, the fire quickly enveloped more than 5 square miles of brush near a freeway, State Route 14. Some lanes were shut and Metrolink train service in the area was halted.

Huge flames leapt on ridgetops and smoke could be seen miles away in downtown Los Angeles.

“You could see the fire (on) the top of that mountain, the tops of all these mountains, 20 feet up in the air,” Bell said. “It absolutely looked like the apocalypse.”

About 300 firefighters and a dozen aircraft fought the fire. As night fell, the flames were heading away from the more heavily populated areas of Santa Clarita, which has around 180,000 residents, toward the Angeles National Forest.

Nighttime images showed long glowing lines on the ridges, topped by soaring swaths of flames and walls of smoke.

Further south in San Diego County, a 20-acre fire briefly threatened some homes in the Ramona area before firefighters stopped its advance. And a blaze that began Thursday on the Camp Pendleton Marine base was 35 percent contained after burning more than a square mile of brush. No buildings were threatened.

In the steep, rugged canyons near the Central California coast, a fire near Big Sur in Monterey County burned nearly 1½ square miles of brush, grass and redwoods. Garrapata State Park south of Carmel was closed for the weekend. The fire was heading toward the famously beautiful Big Sur forest.

In Northern California, a blaze in Calaveras County was stopped at 57 acres.