LOS ANGELES _ Firefighters battling a fast-moving brush fire that has scorched 2,000 acres in the hillsides near Murrieta, Calif., increased containment of the blaze to 20% overnight, state fire officials said Friday.
Nearly 900 firefighters have been assigned to the Tenaja fire in Riverside County, which erupted about 4 p.m. Wednesday near Tenaja and Clinton Keith roads on a day marked by thunderstorms in the region, officials said.
While the blaze burned all the way down to the Copper Canyon neighborhood in Murrieta on Thursday, crews stopped the flames before any homes were destroyed, said Capt. Fernando Herrera, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
"The fire probably came within a couple thousand feet of homes," he said.
The blaze, which has forced hundreds of people from their homes, is threatening 1,200 structures. Two structures have received a small amount of cosmetic damage, according to fire officials.
One firefighter suffered a non-life-threatening injury in the blaze. The cause of the fire has not been determined.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the fire was most active in the midafternoon. Forecasters and fire officials said the same could happen Friday as it was expected to be another hot, somewhat dry day, with humidity at about 30% and gusts up to 15 mph in the late morning and afternoon.
"We'll take advantage of nightfall," Herrera said Thursday. "This evening, we'll be able to get our folks up on the higher ridges to work that and just continue strengthening the perimeter of the fire, making sure we put out any hot spots on the perimeter so we have that in effect tomorrow."
Firefighters had begun to get a handle on the blaze by early Thursday, but then in the afternoon gusting winds pushed flames across fire breaks and sent them racing down the ridge. The flames burned up to a creek area at the base of the Copper Canyon development and again threatened homes, but firefighters were able to beat them back, Herrera said.
Officials issued new evacuation orders Thursday for homes along Montanya, Botanica and Belcara places and Lone Oak Way in Murietta. Officials had previously ordered evacuations of houses along the Trails Circle in La Cresta and Copper Canyon, as well as the Santa Rosa Plateau visitor center on Clinton Keith Road. Evacuations are still in place Friday for more than 400 homes in the area.
Campuses in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District are closed Friday because of the fire and poor air quality in the region.
The blaze erupted toward the end of a remarkably calm summer in terms of wildfires.
After two years of devastating wildfires that burned more than 1.8 million acres in 2018 and 1.2 million acres in 2017, as of Aug. 18, only 51,079 acres had burned this year across state and federal lands in California.
Late spring rains, cooler summer temperatures and fewer extreme wind events, among other factors, have combined to help keep the state from burning uncontrollably, experts say.
But weary fire officials know that can change at any moment _ all it takes is an intense wind event or a prolonged heat wave and then a spark.
