BEAUMONT, Calif. — A growing wildfire chewed through a rugged Southern California mountain range on Thursday, damaging buildings, threatening as many as 600 homes, and forcing some 1,500 people to flee.
A thousand firefighters, 13 helicopters, and six air tankers battled the flames as they pushed eastward along the San Jacinto Mountains, a desert range 90 miles east of Los Angeles, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The fire was estimated at 15
Fire officials estimated that 15 structures burned. A civilian with body burns was flown to a hospital, he said. Four firefighters suffered unspecified injuries.
Residents told of fast-moving flames that left little time to get out after the fire erupted Wednesday afternoon.
In the hardscrabble desert town of Cabazon, hundreds were evacuated in the pre-dawn hours Thursday as the mountain ridge behind their homes glowed red. Many returned after sunrise to pack up more belongings and watch the flickering line of fire snaking up and down the brown, scrubby mountains.
Gray and pink-tinted clouds billowed across the otherwise crystal blue sky, and neighbors could be heard coughing.