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Firefighters battle the Bluecut Fire along Swarthout Canyon Road in the Cajon Pass, north of San Bernardino, Calif. Picture: Will Lester/The Sun via AP
FIRE officials say more than 82,000 people have been told to evacuate from mountain communities threatened by a powerful wildfire in Southern California.
San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric Sherwin says the evacuation orders were given to about 34,500 homes.
A San Bernardino County firefighter is shrouded in dust and smoke as handcrew members and a bulldozer cleared smouldering debris from a wildfire in Hesperia, Calif. Picture: James Quigg/The Daily Press via APSource:AP
Sherwin says some structures have already burned, but it hasn’t yet been determined whether any of them were homes.
The 22-square-kilometre fire near Cajon Pass has seen massive growth in the eight hours since it broke out on Tuesday morning.
The blaze, 96-kilometres east of Los Angeles, has shut down a section of Interstate 15, the main route between Southern California and Las Vegas.
Mike Callaway, of the San Bernardino County Fire Department, attacks burning brush along Highway 173 while battling a wildfire in Hesperia, Calif. Picture: James Quigg/The Daily Press via APSource:AP
As that fire surged, a major blaze north of San Francisco was fading and some 4,000 people in the town of Clearlake were allowed to return home.
The wildfires were the latest in a weeks-long stretch of heat and drought-driven fires across California that raged well before the official start of wildfire season in early autumn.