Wildfires close long stretch of U.S. 395

In the latest indication that this will be a long, smoky summer, two lightning-sparked wildfires burned unchecked Saturday through 34,000 acres of the Inyo National Forest, forcing officials to shut down long stretches of U.S. Highway 395, the gateway to the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

At various times, portions of Highway 395 were closed between Bishop on the north and Pearsonville on the south -- a 115-mile-long stretch of highway.

In the middle, flames licked at the western edge of the small town of Independence, where authorities evacuated hundreds of people, some of whom were given 10 minutes’ notice.

In the thick of the fire, an orange glow bathed the steep, rugged slopes of the mountainsides, and dense smoke blanketed the chaparral plains in between as helicopters dropping fire retardant and water peppered the sky.

There were no reports of injuries or deaths.

Highway 395 is an essential thoroughfare to a list of destinations that reads like a California travel guide: Mammoth Lakes, Lake Tahoe, the John Muir Wilderness and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

By Saturday night, officials were escorting some cars along Highway 395. But the possibility of additional closures raised the specter of a logistical nightmare today, as tens of thousands of people try to get home after the Fourth of July holiday.

“As long as it’s not safe, it won’t be open,” said Jim Wilkins, an Inyo National Forest spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. “Trust me, there is great heartache for every second we have that road closed. We are very, very aware of how we inconvenience people.”

Congestion was spreading as travelers were rerouted into towns such as Mammoth Lakes that already were jammed. Some had given up on Highway 395 by nightfall and had decided to take the long way home.

One man returning to his home in Orange County after a vacation in Mammoth said he planned to head across Tioga Pass Road in Yosemite National Park before continuing south.

“The phones are ringing all over the place,” said Gay Scobey, concierge at Mammoth Lakes’ Shiloh Inn.

The calls were coming both from rerouted motorists and waylaid vacationers who had checked out and were trying to get their rooms back. “It’s going to get crazy,” Scobey said.

The fires had burned more than 34,000 acres in the 2-million-acre Inyo National Forest by 10 p.m. Saturday and were entirely uncontained despite the efforts of more than 400 firefighters, officials said.

Marc Peebles, a spokesman for a multi-agency firefighting team, said officials were facing “extreme and erratic fire behavior.” Officials said the roster of firefighters could double by the end of today.

Some structures had been lost, though officials could not estimate how many.

The towns of Independence and Big Pine were “still directly in the path of the fire,” Wilkins said. He said there were 500 residences threatened as well as “several hundred” other structures.

So was the Big Pine power plant and two major transmission lines that route electricity to the Los Angeles area. Firefighters built a perimeter around the plant and the lines and were preparing to defend them at nightfall, said Kim Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The fires were traced to a brief lightning storm that erupted Friday afternoon.

There were only about 20 lightning strikes during the storm, but they sparked 10 separate wildfires, said Inyo National Forest spokeswoman Nancy Upham.

“That is a pretty phenomenal fact in itself about how dry things are,” she said.

Seven of the 10 fires, mostly small and isolated, were contained quickly. Three remained active Saturday morning, then -- feeding on dry vegetation and fueled by high winds, low humidity and temperatures hovering around 100 degrees -- merged into two distinct fires.

“Things are so dry that it takes one spark into sagebrush for it to explode,” Upham said.

One of the fires, near Independence -- the blaze that forced the closure of Highway 395 after embers jumped the road -- had burned about 27,500 acres. The other, near Big Pine, had burned more than 6,500 acres. Viewed as a single, regional threat, the blazes have been dubbed the Inyo Complex fire.

Wilkins said the fire could grow to as much as 40,000 acres. Temperatures will top 100 degrees today, with the humidity again dropping near the 5% mark that it reached Saturday.

Residents in the area were warned to prepare for evacuations, though officials hoped to avoid them.

Benett Kessler, a longtime Independence resident and the owner of KSRW-TV Channel 33 and KSRW-FM (92.5), lives on the north side of town and was among those who had braced for a possible evacuation.

“We’ve got sprinklers running on our house, as do many of our neighbors,” she said.

Numerous campgrounds were evacuated Saturday, and at least one was destroyed.

Firefighters and Inyo County officials were searching on foot for hikers and backpackers trekking through the John Muir Wilderness, a popular stretch of the Sierra Nevada that includes 14,496-foot-high Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States.

“They will be hiking out of the wilderness ... and wondering how to get out,” Upham said.

Of particular concern were 25 cars that were parked at a trailhead known as Onion Valley, west of Independence.

Officials plan to restrict, at least for a few days, the issuance of wilderness permits in the region.

Officials throughout the state have been bracing for wildfires this summer; a winter that was so dry it broke records fostered tinder-dry conditions. Fire officials have said that conditions are so extreme in some areas that heat from fires can cause shrubs half a mile away to burst into flames.

The Sierra fires exhibited equally alarming behavior; officials said the flames advanced downhill, which is unusual, and on several occasions gusting, swirling winds pushed embers over the heads of firefighters trying to dig a protective fire line, causing smaller fires to break out around them.

“When the fire was running, if you were in front of the line of fire you could not have run fast enough to not be overcome,” Wilkins said. “It’s a perpetual- motion machine.”

Authorities have been so concerned that some California communities canceled fireworks displays on the Fourth of July.

Red-flag conditions have plagued the state since last month’s Angora fire in South Lake Tahoe, which scorched more than 3,000 acres and burned more than 250 homes.

Indeed, the Sierra blazes came only days after authorities announced that they had fully contained the Angora fire. And they were among a number of fires that were being fought throughout the state.

In Santa Barbara County, more than 1,500 firefighters were battling a 7,500-acre blaze in the Los Padres National Forest that threatened Figueroa Mountain-area campgrounds, a resort at Zaca Lake and the historic Manzana schoolhouse. Just 15% of the fire had been contained.

The Zaca wildland fire started Wednesday about 15 miles northeast of Buellton, caused by sparks from metal grinding equipment workers used to fix a water pipe, fire officials said.

Since Friday, 11 firefighters have suffered injuries, mostly heat-related. One suffered a broken leg.

In Los Angeles County, a fire surged to more than 600 acres near the Antelope Valley Freeway before firefighters got the upper hand. But nearly 40 homes were temporarily evacuated and the freeway was temporarily closed, said county Fire Capt. Mike Brown.

More than 300 firefighters, as well as 50 engines and seven water-dropping helicopters, battled the blaze, which spread south of Agua Dulce Canyon Road and near Vasquez Rocks County Park. There were no reports of injuries or property damage.

Firefighters also were battling a 14,700-acre blaze in the Plumas National Forest, about 150 miles northeast of Sacramento, that was sparked by lightning.

julie.cart@latimes.com

tami.abdollah@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Scott Gold, John Mitchell and Louis Sahagun contributed to this report.

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Big burn

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Fires burning in the Eastern Sierra’s Inyo National Forest closed as much as 115 miles of U.S. Highway 395 on Saturday. Campgrounds, Glacier Lodge and portions of Independence were evacuated. At times during the day, Highway 395 was closed as far north as Bishop and as far south as Pearsonville.