(AP) At least 30 and perhaps as many as 40 houses were destroyed in a rural area near Tehachapi by a wind-driven wildfire that was threatening scores of other homes Wednesday morning. It was the second huge fire in Kern County and prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a state of emergency for the county.
The more destructive of the fires was burning about 10 miles southeast of Tehachapi, between Tehachapi and Mojave.
More than 30 homes were lost in the small hill community of Old West Ranch and another 150 structures were threatened, firefighters said.
Kern County Fire Department Engineer Anthony Romero said the fire erupted at about 3 p.m. By 1 a.m. it had grown to 1,230 acres, or nearly 2 square miles, according to the fire department.
"The wind has been a big factor," Romero said. "It's changing on us a lot."
Homes in the eastern foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains were smoldering early Wednesday, with one structure appearing to have collapsed in on itself. A singed, wooden banister was the only piece of the home left standing.
About 250 firefighters from several different agencies were on the scene, along with water-dropping aircraft. Crews were working on the southeast corner of the blaze widening bulldozer lines and setting backfires.
"We're trying to put to bed a fire that could get a lot bigger," he said Batallion Chief David Goodell.
Years of drought, along with tree diseases and bugs among the foothills' pine and chaparral, have turned the area into a "tinderbox," Goodell said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Wyant Winsor, 52, a delivery driver for the local school district, was working on property he owns in Old West Ranch when he saw the first smoke at about 2:20 p.m. and watched as it grew rapidly over the next half hour.
When the fire department told him to evacuate, he parked his tractor in a clearing and made a run for it.
"Hopefully it'll be OK. I guess I'll know tomorrow, he said with a nervous laugh.
Winsor said he and a friend drove down the road through the fire with flames lapping at his truck on both sides, barely able to see the road in front of them through the smoke.
Trace Robie, a housewife who lives on Old West Ranch, said the fire grew very quickly and spread through the dry brush, old oaks and pines on the steep hillside.
She grabbed a handful of clothes, her dogs, her cat, a dish to give her pets water and her purse. "I always said I'd grab my photo albums but there was no time. I didn't even think about it," she said.
A Red Cross shelter for displaced residents was set up at Jacobsen Middle School in Tehachapi. By late Tuesday, only 11 people had checked in, said shelter manager Leonard Arends.
Arends, who lives in Tehachapi, described the Old West Ranch area as a mix of mobile homes and large new stucco homes surrounded by heavy pine and oak brush. He said the residents are a close-knit group of people, many of them retirees.
Near Kernville, the Bull fire had grown to more than 11,000 acres, or 17 square miles. It earlier destroyed six homes and forced the evacuation of Camp Irwin Owen, a camp for juvenile offenders near Kernville. It was 5 percent contained as of 4 a.m. Wednesday.
The cause of the blaze, which began Monday, is under investigation.
