California fire drives people from 10000 homes

Onlookers gather at the parking lot of a shopping mall along Golden Valley Road in Santa Clarita, California to watch the Sand Fire burn in the hills above the city. The majority were allowed back Monday night, with residents of two neighborhoods remaining out of their homes.

Firefighters use foam to put out flare ups on a home at the end of Iron Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., on Sunday, July 24, 2016.

A previous version of this story said incorrectly that a $3 million home was destroyed. Cal Fire is not releasing the exact location of the homes to prevent looting.

No one has been injured.

Brock Bradford lives in a historic house in Palo Colorado, one of the evacuated areas, and could see the flames coming down the road as he fled.

A firefighting army converged Monday on a risky wildfire burning in the mountainous northern fringe of metropolitan Los Angeles after it wildly expanded and forced thousands of people from their homes during the weekend. He said the areas of Sand Canyon and Via Princessa are now being checked and hoped to repopulate those areas sometime Monday.

Flames engulfed a steep Southern California hillside as crews worked to clear around 10,000 homes by today as a wildfire raged through tinder-dry canyons.

Officials in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, are blaming poor air quality and smoky skies on a pair of California wildfires.

Residents reported smoke-filled air and falling ash over the weekend in many parts of northern and central Los Angeles County. Smoke in Reno is blowing from the Big Sur area more than 300 miles away that has destroyed 20 homes.

All of the affected communities, about 40 miles (65 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, are in or around the rugged San Gabriel Mountains.

“There’s still a lot of firefighting to be done”, forest service spokesman Justin Correll said.

“They felt that they lost additional structures because they had to stop what they were doing to help citizens evacuate”, Osby said.

The fire in Monterey County near Big Sur has burned 20 homes and is threatening a scenic stretch of coastline. He said he will also introduce a motion calling for a report from the county fire department on its aerial resources – and whether the county needs to either purchase its own SuperScooper aircraft or arrange to lease one year-round. When authorities advised residents to leave, Bresnick’s friend left, but he did not.

Evacuated pets can be taken to county shelters in Lancaster, Agoura, Castaic and Palmdale or to trailers next to evacuation centers.

More than 1,300 personnel are battling the 23-square-mile fire, which is burning mostly out of control in hard-to-reach terrain. Since late Sunday, the fire has eaten through 51 square miles of brush along the north Los Angeles area.

Almost 3,000 fire fighters battled to outflank the blaze.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department said that theSand Fire has grown to more than 33,000 acres or around 52 square miles by Sunday night. It’s just 10 percent contained. Fire and law enforcement officials repeatedly urged residents to evacuate when ordered, or even earlier.

The wildfire that ignited Friday afternoon is burning in brush land in and around the Angeles National Forest where wildfires have been suppressed for decades.