LOS ANGELES — Two huge wildfires driven by strong Santa Ana winds burned into neighborhoods near Los Angeles on Monday, forcing frantic evacuations on smoke- and traffic-choked highways, destroying homes and causing at least two deaths.
More than 1,000 firefighters and nine water-dropping aircraft battled the 4,700-acre Marek Fire at the northeast end of the San Fernando Valley, and the 5,000-acre Sesnon Fire in the Porter Ranch area at the west end. Winds blew up to 45 mph with gusts reaching 70 mph.
Authorities confirmed more than three-dozen mobile homes burned at the Marek Fire and TV news helicopter crews counted about 10 homes destroyed by the Sesnon Fire. Both fires also consumed commercial sites.
Firefighters were struggling with the resurgent, day-old Marek Fire when the new blaze erupted at midmorning a few miles to the west.
“It is a blowtorch we can’t get in front of,” said Los Angeles County fire Inspector Frank Garrido.
Fire officials alerted communities as far south as Malibu, 20 miles away, as an ominous dark plume streamed over rows of homes. Fire officials could not immediately estimate how many homes were in the path of the Sesnon Fire.
Residents were not allowed to drive into one of Porter Ranch’s gated communities because officials wanted to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles. Instead they parked their cars, ran to their homes and carried out whatever they could carry in pillow cases, in their arms, sacks and suitcases. Some ran out clutching paintings.
A man was killed in four-vehicle crash on the nearby 118 Freeway. At some point, motorists stopped on the freeway because of the flames and CHP officers turned them around to use an o-ramp as an exit, said CHP Capt. J.D. Goodwin.
Earlier, a fatality was discovered at the Marek Fire, an area where neighborhoods abut rugged canyonlands below the mountainous Angeles National forest. The man appeared to have been a transient living in a makeshift shelter, officials said.
About 1,200 people evacuated due to the Marek Fire, which was just 5 percent contained.
“We could have had an army there and it would not have stopped it,” Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Mario Rueda said. “Wind is king here; it’s dictating everything we are doing.”
Olive View-UCLA Medical Center moved five of its most fragile patients to other hospitals. Some other patients were discharged but the hospital decided it was not necessary to evacuate about 180 others.
Flames jumped the Foothill Freeway, which was closed in both directions for about a three-mile stretch in northern Los Angeles between the 118 Freeway and I-5 amid the morning rush hour, officials said.
Monday afternoon, a wildfire on Camp Pendleton forced the evacuation of military housing and several neighborhoods near the Marine base. About 100 acres have burned. Authorities didn’t immediately know how many people were in the evacuated areas.
In northern California, a blaze charred more than half of San Francisco Bay’s largest island but spared scores of historical structures, including an immigration station that was the first stop for millions of immigrants, mostly from China, in the early 1900s. The Angel Island wildfire was about 75 percent contained.
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