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Operation commander optimistic giant California blaze being brought under control, but threats remain.
Sitting on a roof, two residents watch a wildfire burn during the Station Fire in La Crescenta, Calif., on Tuesday.
AP photo
LOS ANGELES — Firefighters set backfires and removed brush with bulldozers across a huge swath of Southern California forest on Tuesday to try to contain a 190-square-mile wildfire that has destroyed 53 homes and threatened thousands more in foothill suburbs.
The commander of the vast firefighting operation expressed a positive outlook for the first time in the week since the blaze erupted in the Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles and grew into a giant.
“I’m feeling a lot more optimistic today than I did yesterday and the crews are doing fabulous work out there on the grounds but the bottom line is that they’re fighting for every foot,” said Mike Dietrich of the U.S. Forest Service.
The fire continued to spread in wilderness but Dietrich said the containment figure was expected to rise substantially from the current 5 percent after overnight progress was mapped. He noted that bulldozers had carved up to 12 miles of lines and no new structures were lost overnight.
Some 3,600 firefighters and aircraft were working across a 50-mile span to battle the blaze.
“There’s action everywhere,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said as a thundering helicopter interrupted his news conference at the scene of two other wildfires burning in the inland region east of Los Angeles.
Firefighters were keeping a close eye on the weather. Hurricane Jimena roared toward Baja California, but was not forecast to have much of a factor in firefighting efforts because it is expected to dissipate by the time it hits Southern California.
Meteorologist Curt Kaplan says there was a 20 percent chance of a thunderstorm in the fire area Tuesday, but that could end up being a bad thing because the storm could spawn 40-mph wind gusts. The one factor that’s helped firefighters this week has been the lack of wind to drive the flames. Kaplan says temperatures will begin slowly cooling later in the week.
“The good news is that it’s humidity,” Dietrich said. “The bad news is that it may produce lightning, possibly dry lightning, over parts of the fire area.”
The blaze threatened about 12,000 homes but had already done its worst to the suburban Tujunga Canyon neighborhood, where residents returned.