Here is video footage of the fire by NBC. [Just ignore the 30 second advertisement. There is no way to remove it from the footage.]
Here is the story by CNN updated 12:36 PM ET, Sunday June 5, 2016:
(CNN) Hundreds
of firefighters are battling a blaze in Los Angeles County that has forced at
least 5,000 people to evacuate their homes, authorities said.
Since the inferno started Saturday afternoon it has
already torched 516 acres, Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp
said. As of Sunday morning, the blaze was 30% contained.
The fire is on the slope of a canyon, "which
makes it very dangerous for us to do a direct attack," Tripp said.
The wildfire broke out Saturday afternoon in the
Calabasas area -- a relatively affluent part of Los Angeles County that is home
to a handful of celebrities, including Jessica Simpson and Toni Braxton,
authorities said.
About 3,700 homes -- or about 5,000 people -- were
ordered to evacuate in Calabasas and nearby Topanga, mountainous communities
west of Los Angeles and north of Malibu.
On Sunday morning, authorities lifted the
evacuation order for Calabasas, but Topanga residents should stay away,
officials said.
"The fire is not on the road, it is halfway up
the side of a mountain," Tripp said. "That's why we can't let people
back in their homes."
So far, the blaze has destroyed a large building
and damaged two
homes, he said.
HOW IT STARTED
The fire started around 4:15 p.m. PT Saturday when
a pickup truck struck a power pole on Mulholland Highway in Calabasas, the
sheriff's department said.
"Witnesses reported that the truck was traveling
at a high rate of speed before colliding into a power pole, causing the pole to
fall and a transformer to explode, thus igniting the Calabasas fire,"
Deputy Jeffrey A. Gordon said.
"Witnesses reported that the truck was
traveling at a high rate of speed before colliding into a power pole, causing
the pole to fall and a transformer to explode, thus igniting the Calabasas
fire," Deputy Jeffrey A. Gordon said.
Temperatures in nearby Topanga reached the mid-90s
earlier in the day, according to the National Weather Service.
The fire has been dubbed the "Old Fire"
due to its proximity to Old Topanga Canyon Road. It came right up to the edges
of Calabasas High School and Viewpoint School.
FIGHTING BLAZE WITH GARDEN HOSES
About 400 firefighters, along with water-dropping
helicopters, are trying to contain the blaze, Tripp said.
He said three firefighters were injured. Two
suffered knee injuries, and one had a "cardiac event."
"This is extremely arduous work for them to
do," Tripp said.
Steve Gentry, a photojournalist who filmed the
firefighters, told CNN the situation was "very serious."
"At
one point, the fire was licking right up through to the backyards of a lot of
the homes of the residents in that area, to the point where even sheriffs'
deputies were grabbing garden hoses and using them to fight the fire," he
said.
"Things
here in California, they're very dry and it doesn't take a whole lot for a fire
to get going and spread really rapidly."
Pictures
of the blaze show residents staring at bright, tall flames creeping toward the
sky, visible from nearby streets.
[The rest of this story was intentionally omitted.]
