Many Americans are closely watching the dumpster fire of the Democratic National Convention.
However, a true wildfire is blazing near Santa Clarita, the third largest city in Los Angeles County.
The effort to control the raging Sand fire in the Santa Clarita Valley mountains has drawn firefighters and emergency crews in the hills toward Acton. So far, the fire has burned an estimated 33,172 acres and continues to threaten hundreds of homes.The blaze has prompted the evacuation of at least 10,000 homes and fire remains only 10% contained. At least 18 structures have been destroyed.
The scorched body of a man was found in a car of a home’s driveway in Santa Clarita.
It’s so large and fast-moving, fire officials have used the term, unprecedented.
The fire has burned about 10,000 acres per day since it began Friday in the hills north of Los Angeles, growing at a rate firefighters described as “almost unprecedented.””It has averaged about 10,000 acres per day,” said Chief Mike Wakoski, incident commander. “An acre is a football field, so imagine that — 10,000 football fields per day.”
The blazes have destroyed the homes of several firefighters.
…Sergio Toscano, a Marine veteran and a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service since 2012, was battling a blaze in the Cleveland National Forest near San Diego when the Sand Fire erupted in the Santa Clarita Valley area.When the Sand Fire — which has so far killed one person, destroyed 18 homes and scorched 33,000 acres at only 10 percent containment – raged through the Bear Divide Ranger Station, it destroyed the homes of Toscano and two other U.S. Forest Service firefighters….
Emergency response personnel in the new millennium face some interesting challenges. Gawkers using drones are a potential threat to firefighting aircraft.
Yesterday, we had a couple incursions in our airspace, which is already a very dynamic and very busy time for our aircraft during the firefight as the fire comes down to the neighborhoods,” Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Rob Garcia said at a morning news conference.Drones flying over the area had the potential to impede firefighter efforts from the air as they worked to protect property, Garcia explained. Crews are utilizing 26 helicopters in their efforts to contain the massive inferno.
High temperatures, low humidity and 3 decades of brush build-up are contributing to the Sand Fire’s devastating intensity. The cause of the conflagration, which broke out close to the 14 Freeway near Sand Canyon, is not currently known and will be fully investigated.
And while San Diego is a couple of hours south of this event, we have noticed haze and smokey sunsets as a result of the firestorm. Many images taken by Californians in the area of this fire are stunning.
Hopefully, our firefighters will be able to contain and control the Sand Fire before too many more sunsets go by.
(Featured Image via Twitter).
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