Wildfire Threatens Power Lines in California

(July 31) -- Plumes of gray smoke are streaked across Los Angeles' skies this morning from a wildfire that's burned 20 square miles of desert brush, ignited backyard fences and threatened key electricity lines that carry power to huge swaths of southern California.

Two giant air tankers are dumping water and fire retardant on the so-called Crown Fire, which has already jumped an aqueduct and threatens hundreds of homes near the town of Palmdale. Some 2,300 structures remain in danger.

"It's a tough situation but we're steadily taking chunks out of this fire, protecting the infrastructure - power lines, roads and the like," Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Frederic Stowers told The Associated Press.

Mandatory evacuation orders have been lifted and thousands of people have been able to return to their homes after firefighters got the Crown Fire about 20 percent contained overnight, CNN reported. But about 300 homes are still under evacuation orders, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The blaze has burned about 13,000 acres in the Los Angeles County area, and two other fires have consumed another 17,000. More than 1,700 firefighters and 250 fire engines are deployed on the Crown Fire. Details were reported by several news agencies.

Friday turned out to be one of southern California's hottest days of the year, with winds and low humidity that exacerbated conditions at the Crown Fire. "That's creating a little bit of a challenge, and obviously causing a bit more fire spread," the L.A. County Fire Dept.'s Matt Levesque told CNN.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger noted the weather shift at a news conference Friday. "We were very fortunate not to have fires for some time, because the air was cool and we didn't have the experience of dry weather and all of these winds and so on, but all of a sudden the fire season kicked in," he said.

"But we are ready," Schwarzenegger said. "There's great coordination going on, and we have resources distributed all over the state." He declared a state of emergency earlier this week in Kern County, about 130 miles north of Los Angeles, freeing up state resources to aid firefighters battling two fires there. "We are deploying everything that we've got," he said.

With the Crown Fire threatening power lines that service much of southern California, the L.A. Department of Water and Power is asking residents to cut back on their energy usage to avoid brownouts or outages. None has been reported.

"We're asking people to help care for our infrastructure while this fire is burning, as we wait for the potential threat to diminish," department spokesman Brooks Baker told the L.A. Times.