2 Wildfires Prove Hard to Subdue

A wildfire that began near off-roading trails just north of Lake Arrowhead on Tuesday morning had burned through 2,500 acres of the San Bernardino Mountains by early evening and was headed northeast toward the high desert community of Apple Valley.

The Pinnacles fire was not threatening any homes as it raced through chaparral and dense grasses in the forest, but the fire was moving so quickly that firefighters contained only 5% of the blaze by Tuesday evening.

Fire officials urged residents in the Marianas area, Apple Valley Highlands, Juniper Flats and Twin Peaks to gather their belongings and prepare for an evacuation if the winds accelerated and pushed the fire down the mountainsides into the quick-burning fuels in the high desert.

Firefighters originally thought they had the fire under control when it had burned just several acres Tuesday morning, but spot fires broke out, causing the fire to spread. Eight airplanes and five helicopters assisted from the air as about 500 firefighters worked on containment lines on the ground.

“They’re still in initial attack mode,” Valerie Baca, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service, said Tuesday evening. “It’s just a rapid-moving rate of spread.”

Residents of the Lake Arrowhead area watched a large mushroom cloud of smoke rise from the mountains throughout much of Tuesday.

Chris Spurgeon, a maintenance manager at the Lake Arrowhead Country Club, drove two miles north on remote roads to a mountaintop where he could confirm for his colleagues that the fire was moving away from the lake.

Residents feared that a change in wind direction could send the fire back toward them.

“Everybody on this mountain is pretty scared, because we’ve had a fair number of fires in the last 10 years,” Spurgeon said. “It puts everybody on edge.”

An evacuation center has opened at Victor Valley College, 18422 Bear Valley Road, Victorville.

Meanwhile, Southern California firefighters were still struggling to contain the 84,503-acre Day fire, whose southern edge is seven miles north of Fillmore in the Los Padres National Forest and is not threatening any structures. Calmer weather Tuesday helped keep the fire in place, according to Bruce Emmens, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

“There was not that much growth in the fire today. That’s why the acres are staying pretty much constant right now,” Emmens said.

The fire is about 15% contained, and officials hope cooler temperatures and higher humidity in the next few days will allow them to make progress building about 50 miles of fire break to contain the flames.

About 1,874 firefighters from nearly 50 agencies are fighting the blaze, and costs of suppressing it have reached about $19.5 million.

maeve.reston@latimes.com