California wildfires burn near Los Angeles and Big Sur

As of Saturday morning the fast-moving Sand Fire in Santa Clarita California has burned 11,000 acres and is now 10% contained.

Hot and dry temperatures, together with gusts of up to 40 mph (about 64 km per hour) helped the fire burned more than 2,000 acres (some 8 square km) overnight. Another 100 homes were evacuated Saturday, according to the Angeles National Forest’s Twitter, but the area where the homes were located was not specified.

Residents evacuate over 300 homes in Santa Clarita due to a brush fire that broke out along the northbound Antelope Valley Freeway in Santa Clarita, California, and continued to burn Saturday morning with no recent containment by firefighters.

The fire erupted Friday afternoon in the Sand Canyon area near State Route 14 as the region was gripped by high heat and very low humidity. The freeway is now open in both directions but that is subject to change based on fire behavior. One lane of the 14 Freeway remained closed as crews worked to suppress flames that were near the road, according to the Angeles National Forest Service. “That’s where we have structures and residents”. About 200-300 homes in the Little Tujunga area, from Bear Divide to Gold Creek, were under mandatory evacuations. So far, no injuries nor damage to property have been reported.

Nathan Judy, spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service representing the Angeles National Forest, said over 300 strike teams from Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties are fighting the fire.

“There is a large horse population out here, that’s why we have the large animal shelter available”, Judy said.

“The first thing you think is, ‘What’s important?'” she said. You look around the house and you say, as much as you love those beautiful plates and those things on the wall, what’s really the most valuable thing? “I grabbed all the pictures of the kids and then I took the paintings of my parents that had been done by a local artist”.

Hundreds more in the area have been asked to voluntarily evacuate.

The Wildlife Weigh Station sanctuary for exotic animals was issued an evacuation order beginning last night.

The fire erupted Friday in nearly inaccessible terrain 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park. Cal Fire helicopters spent all day flying back and forth between the ocean, where they collected water, and the mountain ridges at the park, where they dropped the water.