A massive wildfire burning 125 miles northeast of San Diego in Cajon Pass has charred 30,000 acres, as of Wednesday morning, and destroyed a "significant number of homes," according to Cal Fire.
San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig, who flew over the fire area Wednesday morning, described it as "devastating." He said a lot of families will come home to nothing.
"It hit hard. It hit fast. It hit with an intensity that we hadn't seen before," he said.
No deaths were reported, but cadaver dogs were searching the ruins for anyone who was overrun by the flames.
In 40 years of fighting fires, Incident Commander Mike Wakoski said, he had never seen conditions as extreme as those in Cajon Pass, where the fire broke out Tuesday morning.
More than 34,000 homes and 82,000 residents are under evacuation warnings.
The fire, which began Tuesday mid-morning along Interstate 15, consumed nearly 47 square miles within 12 hours.
San Diego fire officials sent as many as 70 firefighters and personnel and two air tankers to San Bernadino to help battle the blaze, Cal Fire Capt. Kendal Bortisser told KPBS.
Cajon Pass is a critical highway and rail corridor through mountain ranges that separate major population centers from the Mojave Desert.
The fire tore through canyons and flew over ridges in every direction with astonishing speed, sending flames 80 feet skyward, fire officials said.
"This moved so fast," said Darren Dalton, 51, who along with his wife and son had to get out of his house in Wrightwood, a mountain town of 4,500 popular with skiers in winter. "It went from 'have you heard there's a fire?' to 'mandatory evacuation' before you could take it all in. This is a tight little community up here. Always in rally mode. Suddenly it's a ghost town."
Hundreds of cars packed with residents, belongings and animals left the town. The air for miles around the blaze was filled with smoke. The sound of explosions - possibly from ammunition stored in homes - could be heard in the distance.
Shannon Anderson of Blue Mountain Farms horse ranch in Phelan had to load up and evacuate 40 horses as the fire approached. "It's raining ash," Anderson said, breathing hard.
Devouring ranchlands 60 miles east of Los Angeles, the blaze surged west to the Los Angeles County line and east to the Mojave Desert in the east. The damages were likely to be vast and serious once they could be properly measured.
Sherwin confirmed Tuesday night that it had burned at least a dozen buildings, some of them homes. He said he had seen all kinds of things burn, including the Summit Inn, a historic diner near I-15, he said.
"I'm looking up here and I'm seeing buses, I'm seeing outbuildings, I'm seeing houses," he said.
It was among several large fires burning up and down California, from Shasta County in the far north to Camp Pendleton Marine base in San Diego County. It came after several steady weeks of major fires around the state, even though the full force of fire season has yet to arrive.
But even longtime observers were surprised by the staggering speed of the Southern California fire.
It prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency in the area within hours of it breaking out, a move that more often comes after a blaze has done several days of destruction.
The fire forced a shutdown of part of Interstate 15, leaving commuters and travelers stranded for hours.
Six firefighters were briefly trapped by flames at a home where the occupants had refused to leave, forcing the crew to protect the house, fire officials said.
"We were fully engulfed in smoke," county firefighter Cody Anderson told KCBS-TV. "It was really hard just to see your hand in front of your face."
"We just hunkered down and sat there and waited for the fire to blow over," he said.
Anderson and another firefighter were treated for minor injuries.
