LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Authorities ordered hundreds of residents of a Southern California community to evacuate Thursday as a wildfire threatened to cut off their only escape route.
The 2,500-acre wildfire was one of several in the region that firefighters were trying to contain before hot Santa Ana winds forecast to sweep through this weekend make the job tougher. Wildfires in Southern California this week have destroyed five homes and chewed through about 8,000 acres.
The fire in the San Bernardino National Forest did not immediately threaten homes in the Lytle Creek area, 55 miles east of Los Angeles, but the evacuation was ordered because the area's 1,000-plus residents could have been trapped by the approaching flames, said Bill Peters, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry.
The Red Cross set up a temporary shelter in Fontana for people displaced by the fire, which was 17 percent contained Thursday. Arson was blamed for the fire, but no arrests had been made.
At the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, 50 miles north of San Diego, firefighters were battling a 2,772-acre brush fire that was threatening 300 nearby homes, state forestry spokeswoman Roxanne Provaznik said. Residents were asked to evacuate but as of Thursday afternoon, none had sought refuge at a shelter set up in Fallbrook.
Fire officials said the fire started on a training range Tuesday, apparently sparked by ammunition used in military exercises. Firefighters have been unable to enter the southwestern area of the fire because it could be littered with unexploded ordnance, Provaznik said.
The fire was 28 percent contained, but officials had no estimate on full containment.
In Riverside County, firefighters allowed evacuated residents to return after closing in on a 2,390-acre fire that destroyed five homes.
``Nothing; there's not one thing,'' Kim Peterson told the Los Angeles Times as she inspected the remains of her father's damaged trailer in the hills south of Loma Linda, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles.
Peterson's 85-year-old father tried to fight the flames and sustained second-degree burns. She said rummaging through the burned rubble was especially painful because her mother's ashes, which had been kept inside the trailer, were lost in the fire.
The blaze in Reche Canyon, started by an arsonist Tuesday, damaged three other homes and burned a barn, 21 outbuildings, a boat and several vehicles. State forestry Capt. Rick Vogt said the fire was 80 percent contained Thursday.
