Brush Fires, Fireworks Stay Contained to Give Crews a Quiet Fourth

After battling brush fires for four days, local fire agencies enjoyed a relatively quiet Fourth of July.

A 400-acre brush fire that threatened homes and created massive traffic jams on the Antelope Valley and Golden State freeways Thursday afternoon was extinguished by early Friday morning, county fire officials said.

In the Angeles National Forest, a persistent blaze sparked near Azusa on Tuesday by a homeowner using a brush-clearing device continued to burn. That fire has claimed one home, caused several injuries and burned more than 3,000 acres of the San Bernardino Mountains.

It is not expected to be contained until tonight, United States Forest Service officials said.

Despite the quiet Independence Day, Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Emil Moldovan said his agency is bracing for a busy fire season.

“We are staffing up because we know it’s going to be busy,” Moldovan said. “We hope all the pre-Fourth-of-July publicity that we put out will make a difference.”

“Unfortunately, people don’t listen to us, and every year we put out three to four house fires [on the Fourth of July],” he said. Maybe they were listening this time, because none was reported Friday.

Fire officials were investigating the cause of the Santa Clarita fire, which shut down a portion of the Antelope Valley Freeway from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Moldovan said.

The fire broke out just before noon Thursday a mile south of the juncture of the freeway and Placerita Canyon Road.

No injuries were reported and no structures were destroyed in the blaze, which burned through dense brush on the mostly uninhabited south side of the freeway.

The flames came within yards of the Princess Park Estates just west of Via Princessa, forcing the evacuation of about 45 homes and Disney’s Golden Oak Ranch in Placerita Canyon.

At one point, after the fire jumped the freeway, several homeowners and sheriff’s deputies used hoses in a successful, last-ditch effort to keep the flames away from the housing development.

On Friday, a small brush fire broke out around 10 a.m. along the southbound side of the Golden Street Freeway north of Templin Highway, officials said.

No injuries were reported and no structures were damaged in the fire, which was quickly extinguished after burning half an acre.