Firefighters on Saturday continued to battle the Apple fire in Riverside County, Calif., that has burned more than 4,100 acres in the Cherry Valley area, destroyed one home and prompted evacuations of hundreds of others.
More than 300 firefighters, assisted by several helicopters and air tankers, responded to the fire, which began Friday and sent billowing clouds of white smoke hundreds of feet into the air that could be seen for miles. Firefighters were battling the blaze in triple-digit temperatures that prompted the National Weather Service to issue an extreme heat warning.
Evacuation orders are in place for residents north of Cherry Valley Boulevard, west of Highland Springs and east of Beaumont Avenue. They also include residents north of Gilman Street in the Banning Bluff area.
New evacuation orders were put in place Saturday afternoon in Banning for residents north of Wilson Street, east of Sunset Avenue and west of Hathaway Street. Fire officials said residents can check whether their address is in an evacuation zone through the RivCoReady website.
An evacuation warning was issued about 11:15 a.m. for San Bernardino County residents of the Potato Canyon area west to Raywood Flat, authorities said.
April Newman, a public information officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Riverside County Fire Department, said Saturday that roughly 7,800 residents in more than 2,500 households had been ordered to evacuate.
An evacuation center was opened at Beaumont High School for people and animals.
The vegetation fire was reported at 4:55 p.m. Friday in the 9000 block of Oak Glen Road, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. As of 3 p.m. Saturday, there was zero containment.
Another department spokesperson, Fernando Herrera, said Friday that open land with thick vegetation has provided "quite a bit of fuel for that fire to continue to burn (and) have a lot of intensity."
He said the fire was burning very close to homes.
In Los Angeles County, a 150-acre brush fire was burning around Castaic Lake, north of Santa Clarita, according to the county fire department. No structures were threatened.
"A lot of people's backyards were on fire," Herrera said. "It ran in between homes and around homes. It definitely was very threatening. We could have lost homes, but we brought in a massive amount of ground resources to do structure defense, protect the life and property of all these residents."
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
