New wildfires have erupted near Los Angeles, forcing people from their suburban homes as an intense heatwave stretching from the West Coast to New Mexico blistered the region.
Towering columns of smoke rose from the San Gabriel Mountains as two fires burning less than two miles apart devoured brush on steep slopes above foothill suburbs.
Police in the city of Azusa and parts of Duarte ordered several hundred homes evacuated. Others are under voluntary evacuations.
“It’s crazy. It’s super close,” said 17-year-old Tawni Atencio, whose family was evacuating their home in Bradbury.
She said the flames were just a couple miles away and were making the house hot despite air conditioning. She watched as smoke from the fire billowed outside and helicopters dropped retardant on the flames.
“It looked like a bomb exploded,” she said. “It’s scary. We’re just praying it doesn’t get to our house.”
The two fires grew to a combined seven square miles and brought fears they could soon merge into one.
The first was sparked by a fatal car crash, the California Highway Patrol said.
The second was much closer to foothill areas and brought quick
evacuations. Its cause has not been found.
“We immediately had homes under threat,” Los Angeles County Deputy Chief John B Tripp said.
But then the fire immediately started burning away from the homes, toward the forest. “That was extremely fortunate for us,” he added.
A night-time change in wind direction, however, could return serious danger in a hurry, Mr Tripp added.
Officials had warned of extreme fire danger in the region as the heat peaked. Temperatures surpassed 100 degrees across much of Southern California well before noon, while some desert cities sizzled in the 120s.
Elsewhere, crews made progress against a nearly week-old blaze in rugged coastal mountains west of Santa Barbara. Overnight winds pushed flames into previously burned areas, allowing firefighters to boost containment to more than 50%.
Most mandatory evacuations will be lifted on Wednesday morning and nearly all by Saturday.
About 270 homes and other buildings were threatened by the blaze, which has charred more than 12 square miles since Wednesday.
Other blazes burned wide swathes across Arizona and New Mexico, where firefighters also faced blistering temperatures.
In central New Mexico, a 28-square-mile fire that erupted last week and destroyed 24 homes in the Manzano Mountains south of Albuquerque was largely uncontained. Higher humidity overnight allowed crews to strengthen lines around the fire.
In eastern Arizona, a fire doubled to nearly 42 square miles and led officials to warn a community of 300 residents to prepare to evacuate. The blaze on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation south-west of Show Low was not moving quickly toward the community of Cedar Creek thanks to sparse vegetation and shifting winds.
