SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A car fire ignited a blaze that quickly consumed at least 5,500 acres, burned three homes and shut down the main traffic artery between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a wire service reported.
The fire in Cajon Pass on Wednesday also prompted the mandatory evacuation of several homes and caused power outages to nearly half a million customers when overheated transmission lines shut down.
A freight train that included four tanker cars filled with propane was temporarily trapped on railroad tracks that pass through the area while flames raged only a few hundred feet away, said Mike Furtney, a spokesman for Union-Pacific.
The blaze was caused by a car that became engulfed in flames on the northbound side of Interstate 15, sparking a brush fire on a nearby hillside, said Officer Karen Faciane of the California Highway Patrol.
The flames jumped the highway, prompting the freeway’s closure in both directions, and officials made vehicles on the freeway reverse direction to get off the road. The closure backed up traffic for miles and left some people stranded for hours.
Power was restored to most of the 460,000 Southern California Edison customers within an hour, said Gil Alexander, a company spokesman.
The California blaze paled in comparison to the one in eastern Arizona that has blackened nearly 410,000 acres, destroyed at least 423 homes and forced 30,000 people to flee.
In Colorado, firefighters continued to make progress against a 137,000-acre blaze burning since June 8 about 40 miles southwest of Denver. Thousands of displaced residents have been allowed to return home, though fewer than 800 people remained under evacuation orders, said fire information officer Randy Moench. Firefighters were also battling pesky blazes near Durango in the southwest part of the state.