Homes destroyed as Los Angeles wildfires spread

Reuters Videos
Updated

Homes engulfed in flames.

This was the scene in Northern San Bernadino Thursday after a new blaze erupted in the middle of the night and quickly spread through neighborhoods.

Authorities rushed to wake up sleeping residents - urging them to evacuate.

(SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) CAPT. SHAWN MILLERICK OF SAN BERNADINO FIRE DEPT. SAYING:

"We work in this neighborhood so; we know some of these people and we've been here, there was a house down there where they were trying to clear out their belongings because they had to evacuate and I knew the family because I'd been there medically before."

That was Captain Shawn Millerick of the San Bernardino Fire Department, who says the situation could've been much worse.

(SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) CAPT. SHAWN MILLERICK OF SAN BERNADINO FIRE DEPT. SAYING:

"We had so many resources here quickly and we had two strike teams pre-deployed and ready to go, so that was the difference between a major disaster and what we had here."

Firefighters continue to face difficult weather conditions.

With wind gusts reaching 65 miles per hour in the hilly parts of Los Angeles, and more powerful winds forecast for Thursday as the region is under an unprecedented extreme red-flag warning.

Also, facing threats from the flames: some of California's famous landmarks.

The Getty Center on Monday and on Wednesday - the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Flames raced up to the walls of the Library located in Ventura County's Simi Valley, something Duke Blackwood Director of the Library said was unlike anything he'd ever seen.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) DUKE BLACKWOOD, DIRECTOR OF THE RONALD REAGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, SAYING:

"It was crazy, I mean the smoke and the wind. I've been here in LA for 45 years and I have been through a lot of fires and this was one of the scariest."

An unlikely hero may have saved the day in the case of the Reagan library.

Officials said goats that munched through brush earlier this year created a fire break that slowed the blaze before it reached the museum which houses an Air Force One jet and a piece of the Berlin Wall.