A voracious 6-day-old wildfire that has destroyed more than 50 buildings and churned through more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush showed only small signs of slowing Monday, and fire officials offered little hope of containment as long as hot, dry conditions continued.
The Station fire, the largest of several burning in the state, was plowing through dense hillside vegetation along the San Gabriel Mountains, cutting a remarkable swath that extended from Altadena into the high desert. On Monday, the fire advanced to the west, bringing new evacuations to Sunland-Tujunga and coming within a few miles of Santa Clarita.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, September 02, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
Fire map: A map of the Station fire in Tuesday's Section A mislabeled the San Gabriel Valley communities to the east of Altadena from left to right as Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Arcadia and Bradbury. In order, the labels should have been Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Arcadia and Monrovia.
Despite the fire's sprawling dimensions, stretching up to 25 miles from east to west and 18 miles from north to south, aggressive ground and aerial assaults managed to contain the blaze to largely undeveloped areas.
And on the fire's eastern flank, officials were still hoping a concerted effort to hack away tree limbs, cut fire breaks and lay down fire retardant would spare the Mt. Wilson Observatory and a key complex of communications towers, used for over-the-air broadcasting by nearly 50 radio and television stations.
"There have been hundreds of homes saved in this effort," said Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bryant.
But the outlook for the coming days remains "treacherous," said Mike Dietrich, incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service. "This is a very angry fire. Until we get a change in the weather conditions, I am not overly optimistic. The fire is headed just about anywhere it wants."
Dangerous conditions were expected to increase the risk the blaze could reach new communities in the Antelope, Santa Clarita and San Gabriel valleys. More than 6,000 homes were under mandatory evacuation orders, and full control of the blaze was not expected until well after Labor Day, even as the number of firefighters on the lines swelled to more than 3,700.
By late Monday night, however, some officials offered a sliver of hope during a briefing with firefighters. They said the blaze burned fastest between 6 p.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday, but that its pace appeared to slow during the day Monday.
Losses from the fire spiked Monday when officials learned that more than 30 cabins, homes and other structures were destroyed in the remote Big Tujunga Canyon area. Officials estimated multimillion-dollar losses but stressed they were still tallying the destruction as inspectors reached burned areas.
