Nearly a thousand homes have been reduced to ashes and 300,000 residents evacuated as wildfires continue to rage unchecked across southern California.
One person has been confirmed dead and 41 injured, including 25 firefighters.
Homes and businesses have been consumed by sweeping walls of flame that leapt highways and joined forces to torch hundreds of thousands of acres across the state’s southern regions.
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in seven counties so far. “It is a tragic time for California,” he said.
Fire crews are still unable to contain the blazes and officials fear that conditions will probably worsen in the immediate term, with ferocious Santa Ana winds expected to further fan the flames on Tuesday.
Winds of up to 75 mph are meanwhile preventing the use of aircraft to water-bomb the fires.
“We have literally the perfect firestorm going on,” said San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts. “We’re a long ways from containment, if there is such a thing given these winds.”
Department of Fire and Forestry spokeswoman Roxanne Provaznik said the fire “has multiple heads in multiple directions”, razing a massive area that extends from north of Los Angeles down to San DiegoCounty, including the Mexican border.
“The flames were like 100 feet high, and it moved up the hill in seconds. It was at the bottom, it was in the middle, and then it was at the top,” said Steve Jarrett, who helped a friend evacuate from his home in Escondido, near the city of San Diego.
Neighboring states including Arizona and Nevada have rushed in additional crews and equipment to help fight the fires, while 1,500 National Guard troops have been summoned to assist with firefighting, evacuating residents and controlling crowds in the ensuing chaos.
On Monday, up to 10,000 evacuated residents were expected to spend the night at Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers football team.
Governor Schwarzenegger visited the stadium on Monday and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had pledged to provide “everything we need” including cots, blankets, food and water.
“They have responded much more quickly than what we’ve heard in the past,” he added, in a thinly-veiled reference to FEMA’s botched response to stranded victims of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. President George Bush also reportedly called Governor Schwarzenegger to offer whatever federal assistance was needed.
A combination of environmental conditions are said to have set the stage for the unusually destructive wildfires, which have lined the horizon with bright orange flames and sent thick plumes of black smoke billowing hundreds of miles into the atmosphere.
Southern California’s seasonal Santa Ana winds, notorious for their searing heat and dryness, swept in from the desert before the weekend at a surprisingly high velocity – one gust registered at 112 mph just north of Los Angeles on Friday night.
After one of California’s driest years, which followed a season of unusually high rainfall, the Santa Ana “devil winds” ignited a waiting abundance of highly combustible, dried out vegetation.
The magnitude of the destruction has caught even long-time residents of southern California off guard, including Michelle Stephenson, who has lived in LakeArrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains for thirty years.
“If you live here, you expect it,” she said. “But it’s really bad this time.”
