Two firefighters died on Sunday in a vehicle accident while battling the blaze deep in the Angeles National Forest and the rugged San Gabriel Mountains. Nearly 2,600 firefighting personnel, some from as far away as Montana and Wyoming, have been assembled to battle the flames.
The burned area ballooned to almost 86,000 acres (35,000 hectares) from 42,000 acres reported late Sunday, and the fire continued to encroach on the 5,700-foot summit of Mount Wilson, site of a world-famous observatory and a critical cluster of transmission towers for broadcasting and telecommunications.
Three more residences were lost overnight in the inland area, in addition to the 18 houses reported destroyed on Sunday, said Scott Visyak, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CALFire.
Evacuation orders were lifted on Monday for several foothill communities at the northern edge of suburban Los Angeles that had been menaced by flames during much of the weekend, as well as for the town of Acton, on the opposite side of the massive fire farther to the north, Visyak said.
While the blaze nearly doubled in size overnight, he said fire crews had managed to cut good buffer zones around many of the communities and neighborhoods that had been most at risk.
"We feel good about the lines we've put in to save the communities," Visyak said. "We're feeling pretty comfortable about those communities."
The fire was only 5 percent contained and may not be fully contained for another eight days, officials predicted.
Defending Communications Nexus
Mount Wilson remained an area of concern, but a firestorm expected to engulf the summit Sunday night or Monday morning had not materialized as yet, giving firefighters more time to clear brush away from buildings and towers on the peak.
Dense, low-lying smoke held close to the ground by weather conditions was expected to dissipate later in the day, allowing airplanes to resume making drops of water and fire retardant over the hot spots.
Twenty-one aircraft have been put into action against the fire, including 14 helicopters.
The cause of the fire, which threatened more than 10,000 homes in the heavily populated foothill communities 12 miles (19 km) north of Los Angeles at its peak, was under investigation.
The blaze was fueled by dense, tinder-dry vegetation that had not burned in several decades, triple-digit temperatures and low humidity. The saving grace of the situation so far has been a lack of fierce Santa Ana winds that have fanned many of Southern California's worst wildfires in the recent past.
Still, authorities have warned the fire is unpredictable and urged residents to heed evacuation warnings. Three civilians were reported injured over the weekend, including two who defied evacuation orders and sought shelter in a hot tub when flames converged.
