Plane Battling Blaze Crashes

An air tanker crashed Monday while fighting a Northern California blaze, killing all three crew members, while in San Bernardino County hundreds fled a fire that roared across Interstate 15.

The air tanker crew was battling a 10,000-acre blaze about 25 miles north of Yosemite National Park when the plane lost both wings and crashed into a field, erupting into a fireball, witnesses said.

Ted Glassburn said he had been watching the plane drop retardant and swoop out of a canyon after its final pass. Its right wing was on fire, he said.

“He went to jerk it up and the right wing exploded,” Glassburn said.

Moments later, the hair on Glassburn’s neck was singed as the plane hit less than 150 yards from his auto repair shop. It narrowly missed a housing development across the road, he said.

“It exploded on impact,” Glassburn said.

Reno station KOLO-TV’s news crew was interviewing a man watching the skies with his camcorder when the plane appeared, trailing red fire retardant. Both wings suddenly snapped off.

“We saw it circle around once and then drop through the middle there ....That’s where we saw it break up,” reporter Terri Russell said. “It was almost surreal. You saw it go down and for a second, I thought, ‘Is that really what I saw?’ ”

The C-130 tanker had been battling a blaze that began Saturday about 90 miles south of Reno, near Interstate 395, that had forced the evacuation of about 1,000 people from the town of Walker and a Native American community, Camp Antelope. It nearly doubled in size Monday afternoon.

More than 600 firefighters battled the blaze, but all aircraft were grounded after the crash.

Officials said the cause of the fire was “human” but could not specify. Because it is in a remote area near one used by the U.S. Marines for survival training, containment efforts were slowed by unexploded ordnance.

Footage of the tanker crash stunned Karen Terrill, the chief spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who said both wings appeared to have ripped off as the plane descended.

“That can’t be. That’s not supposed to happen,” Terrill said as she watched tape of the crash on television.

Aviation experts expressed caution about drawing any quick conclusions about the cause of the crash, pointing out that because of the loads they carry, wings usually are the strongest part of a plane.

But Lew Aaronson, a retired Continental Airlines pilot, said that over a brush fire, the sharply maneuvering planes are subject to powerful forces.

“I can see how the heat of the fire could create updrafts, downdrafts, side drafts that could tear the wings off,” Aaronson said.

In San Bernardino County, three firefighters suffered first- and second-degree burns fighting the Blue Cut fire, which began about 2 p.m. Sunday near Interstate 15 just south of the junction with California 138.

By Monday evening it had grown to 5,500 acres and, whipped by strong winds, had jumped across both the north and southbound lanes of Interstate 15 near the Cajon Pass.

More than 850 firefighters were battling the blaze, which was only 10% contained by Monday night. But no other injuries were reported and no homes were destroyed, authorities said.

Officials said they didn’t know when they would have the fire under control. The cause is still under investigation.

“The vegetation is so explosive, that this is what makes it dangerous to our firefighters,” said Bill Peters, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry in San Bernardino.

“These conditions just are so unusual that it makes it a little unpredictable,” he said.

Interstate 15, which had been reopened after a closure Sunday that delayed thousands trying to return to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, was shut down again Monday just as the evening commute began.

As the fire spread north and east, residents living on large lots in the unincorporated area of Oak Hills just south of Hesperia were evacuated.

County sheriff’s officials helped residents load horses and other livestock for transportation to evacuation centers.

Hotels and motels in Hesperia and Victorville were booked solid with refugees from the fire and the freeway. Vohn and Jodie Sherman, returning from Las Vegas, said it took them two hours to inch two miles.

When they finally could exit the freeway, “Nobody told us what to do from there. They didn’t tell us what was going on, where to go,” she said.

The evacuation order was lifted at about 10 p.m., and the southbound lanes were reopened. The northbound lanes were expected to open soon.

Elsewhere in the region, a 6,949-acre fire that began Saturday on coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County was 10% contained.

In Kern County, a 3,430-acre fire near Lake Isabella was 60% contained, and authorities hoped to fully surround it by tonight.

The fire destroyed five homes, five vehicles, seven outbuildings and two boats Saturday.

In Arcadia, one home was severely damaged and two others partially burned Monday when a downed electrical wire touched off a blaze on West Norman Avenue.

Three firefighters suffered minor injuries, officials said.

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Times staff writers Eric Malnic and E. Scott Reckard and the Associated Press contributed to this report.