LOS ANGELES: A new wildfire spread Tuesday at a staggering pace through drought-parched canyons east of Los Angeles, growing to 10 square miles in a matter of hours and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people in a mountain resort town.
The blaze in Cajon Pass caused serious problems for a swath of mountain communities that included Wrightwood, a town of 4,500 people known for its ski slopes.
The flames also forced the shutdown of a section of Interstate 15, the main highway between Southern California and Las Vegas.
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.
Their relief, however, was tempered with anger at a man who authorities believe set the blaze that wiped out several blocks of a small town over the weekend along with 16 smaller fires dating back to last summer.
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.
Blue Mountain Farms, a horse ranch in Phelan, was in the path of the fire about 60 miles east of Los Angeles — just as it was for another fire in the area a year ago.
“Breathing smoke again, just like last year,” Shannon Anderson, a partner in the ranch, said as she panted into the telephone. “It’s raining ash.”
Ranch hands used hoses to wet down fences and anything else that could burn.
Six firefighters protecting homes were briefly trapped by flames and in serious danger before they took shelter in a safe structure, the San Bernardino County Fire Department said in a statement. Two sustained minor injuries and were quickly treated and released from a hospital.
Investigators in Northern California said Tuesday they had been building a case against the suspected arsonist, 40-year-old construction worker Damin Anthony Pashilk, for more than a year but did not have enough evidence to make an arrest until the weekend blaze ripped through Lower Lake.
Nearly a decade ago, Pashilk was an inmate firefighter while serving time on drug possession and firearms charges, according to California corrections department spokeswoman Vicky Waters. He was completing a five-year sentence when he was assigned to fight wildfires for four months in 2007.
The fire destroyed 175 homes, Main Street businesses and other structures in the working-class town of Lower Lake.
“What I’d do to him, you don’t want to know,” said Butch Cancilla, who saw his neighbor’s home catch fire as he fled on Sunday. Cancilla still doesn’t know the fate of his own home and spoke at a center for evacuees set up at a high school.
Pashilk is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.