Fire near Tehachapi destroys 30 to 40 homes
| Tuesday, Jul 27 2010 05:48 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Jul 28 2010 12:51 PM
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A house in the West Fire in Tehachapi burns to the ground 5 miles above Highline Road. About 40 homes have been destroyed in the fire.
Flames race up a ridge in the West Fire in Tehachapi Tuesday evening. About 40 homes have been destroyed in the fire.
Smoke from the West Fire in Tehachapi dwarfs the wind turbines east of the city.
A destroyed structure lies behind a fire hydrant on property near Jump Creek Ranch Road in the mountains of Tehachapi. The West fire has claimed nearly 40 structures.
Nick Smirnoff / The Tehachapi News
A line of fire forms behind firefighters Tuesday night at the Old West Ranch Fire on Blackburn Canyon Road.
West Fire
A swiftly spreading, massive wildfire torched hundreds of acres and destroyed between 30 and 40 homes near Tehachapi, prompting fire officials to evacuate residents from the affected area.
The fire Tuesday near the Old West Ranch community, southeast of Tehachapi, threatened more than 100 other structures, the Kern County Fire Department said. The cause wasn’t known Tuesday night.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency as a result of both what was being called the West Fire and the ongoing Bull Fire in Riverkern. The declaration frees up additonal state resources to fight the fires.
A shelter for residents was set up by nearly a dozen volunteers from the American Red Cross-Kern Chapter at the old Jacobsen Jr. High School, 126 S. Snyder St. As of late Tuesday evening, fewer than 10 people had registered to stay overnight at the shelter.
Carolyn L’Heureux, a groundskeeper at the California Correctional Institution, was on her way home from work when she saw the smoke. She headed to the shelter and has heard from friends that her home burned down.
“I got through birth so I’ll get through this,” said L’Heureux, who made plans to spend Tuesday night with her daughter in Palmdale.
Despite losing her home, she said she’d live in the area again in a heartbeat. She loves the solitude, and said you have to be there to experience what it’s truly like.
A friend of L’Heureux’s, Merle Carnes, said it’s the type of community where everyone checks on everyone else to see how they’re doing. Carnes, who is president of the local homeowners association, said they will be taking care of people who have suffered losses.
The fire spread so rapidly that Wayne Butchko didn’t even have time to grab his dentures. He escaped with his two dogs, Feather and Coco.
“I could feel the heat on my back,” Butchko said. “I could see the flames, and the trees were just popping with explosions.”
He said firefighters have a big job ahead of them, and he expected the wind that kicks up at night in that area will only make things worse.
George Plesko’s hair was scraggly and his shirt discolored, but he was alive. His house on Snowshoe Court was destroyed.
“When I first saw it, it was a small fire,” Plesko said, “but with the wind and the trees it just blew down the canyon.”
Exploding propane tanks blew debris a hundred feet in the air, Plesko said. The roar of the fire sent his cats scattering.
“My stomach’s in a knot,” Plesko said.
Red Cross volunteer Diane Arends said shelters have been set up in Tehachapi before, but nothing of this magnitude. She said a lot of people seemed relatively upbeat considering the circumstances.
By about 6 p.m., the fire had burned an estimated 500 acres. Scores of county firefighters were at the scene with reinforcements arriving from Los Angeles County.
The fire, reported at 3 p.m., started on Blackburn Canyon Road, firefighters said. Fire ravaged through Snowshoe Court and Snowshoe Lane.
“The wind has been the real factor out here,” said Kern County fire spokesman Anthony Romero.
Mark and Kassandra McQuillen, out pushing their 2-year-old daughter as they watched the fire go over the ridge, said the devastated area is a unique, self-sufficient community.
“They live minimally,” Kassandra McQuillen said. “Everything you take for granted these people have already given up.”
“It’s off-the-grid living,” added Mark McQuillen.
Mike Niccoli, who lives on Summers Drive near Mountain Valley Airport, said around 4 p.m. that the fire had been burning in the heart of Old West Ranch, a rural enclave southeast of downtown Tehachapi, for about 2 1/2 hours.
“I’ve got a lot of friends up in Old West Ranch and we’ve been calling. We can’t get ahold of anybody,” he said. “We see a huge amount of traffic going out of the area so we figure the fire department is evacuating.”
Niccoli said he was about two miles from the blaze and could see flames topping the tall pines in the area. As best he could judge, the flames were at least 100 feet high.
“We’ve heard a lot of propane tanks going off,” Niccoli said. “I’ve been up here for 10 years. I’ve seen fires, but never as bad as this.”
In the lower elevations, dozens of residents parked along the roads and watched the fire from afar. After dark, Summers Lane, the road that leads into the affected neighborhood, looked like the site of a great battle.
Small fires dotted the hillside. Oak trees spit fire from their branches. Wooden fences that once sheltered livestock smoldered and smoked, half-consumed by the flames.
Farther up the hill, embers blew cross the dirt roads like hot orange confetti. It was clear this neighborhood had been forever changed.
