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Fast-moving Southern California wildfire torches hillside homes, forcing evacuations

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Fast-moving Southern California wildfire torches hillside homes, forcing evacuations
News

News

Fast-moving Southern California wildfire torches hillside homes, forcing evacuations

2024-08-07 05:25 Last Updated At:05:31

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — A fast-moving wildfire that swept into a Southern California hillside community this week destroyed five homes and damaged three others, authorities said Tuesday.

The flames erupted Monday afternoon and chased residents from the neighborhood in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Los Angeles,

One firefighter was treated for a minor injury but there were no reports of injuries to residents, said Eric Sherwin, spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.

“How quickly this fire hit this community,” Sherwin said, "the fact that we have no civilians injured is truly a miracle.”

The fire was reported at 2:40 p.m. Monday and stopped progressing about three hours later after scorching 54 acres (22 hectares). Containment was holding at 75%, Sherwin said. All evacuations were lifted late Tuesday morning.

Investigators were working to determine the cause of the fire, which erupted amid very dry and hot conditions that have made swaths of California quick to burn this summer.

In Northern California, firefighters battled the reawakened Park Fire, a massive blaze that re-exploded Monday after several days of slumber and grew by as much as 20 square miles (53 square kilometers), mostly in about 12 hours.

The Park Fire, California’s largest so far this year and the state’s fourth-largest on record, had already scorched nearly 647 square miles (1,676 square kilometers) by Tuesday morning.

Firefighters were told during their morning briefing to focus on safety and to be mindful of extreme fire behavior including intense and rapidly moving flames.

The Park Fire was allegedly ignited by arson on July 24 outside the Sacramento Valley city of Chico, and has destroyed 640 structures and damaged 52.

A camper catches fire as several homes burn as a fast-moving wildfire torched a California hillside community on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 in San Bernardino county, Calif. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP)

A camper catches fire as several homes burn as a fast-moving wildfire torched a California hillside community on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 in San Bernardino county, Calif. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP)

Several homes burn as a fast-moving wildfire torched a California hillside community on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 in San Bernardino county, Calif. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP)

Several homes burn as a fast-moving wildfire torched a California hillside community on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 in San Bernardino county, Calif. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP)

A firefighter sprays water as several homes burn as a fast-moving wildfire torched a California hillside community on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 in San Bernardino county, Calif. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP)

A firefighter sprays water as several homes burn as a fast-moving wildfire torched a California hillside community on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 in San Bernardino county, Calif. (ABC7 Los Angeles via AP)

Firefighters mop up after the Edgehill fire in San Bernardino, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)

Firefighters mop up after the Edgehill fire in San Bernardino, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will begin deploying as many as 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the southern border in the coming days, U.S. officials said Wednesday, putting in motion plans President Donald Trump laid out in executive orders shortly after he took office to crack down on immigration.

Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses was expected to sign the deployment orders on Wednesday, but it wasn't yet clear which troops or units will go, and the total could fluctuate. It remains to be seen if they will end up doing law enforcement, which would put American troops in a dramatically different role for the first time in decades.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not yet been made.

The active duty forces would join the roughly 2,500 U.S. National Guard and Reserve forces already there. There are currently no active duty troops working along the border.

The troops are expected to be used to support border patrol agents, with logistics, transportation and construction of barriers. They have done similar duties in the past, when both Trump and former President Joe Biden sent active duty troops to the border.

Troops are prohibited by law from doing law enforcement duties under the Posse Comitatus Act, but that may change. Trump has directed through executive order that the incoming secretary of defense and incoming homeland security chief report back within 90 days if they think an 1807 law called the Insurrection Act should be invoked. That would allow those troops to be used in civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil.

The last time the act was invoked was in 1992 during rioting in Los Angeles in protest of the acquittal of four police officers charged with beating Rodney King.

The widely expected deployment, coming in Trump’s first week in office, was an early step in his long-touted plan to expand the use of the military along the border. In one of his first orders on Monday, Trump directed the defense secretary to come up with a plan to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful mass migration.”

On Tuesday, just as Trump fired the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Linda Fagan, the service announced it was surging more cutter ships, aircraft and personnel to the “Gulf of America” — a nod to the president’s directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump said during his inaugural address on Monday that “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came.”

Military personnel have been sent to the border almost continuously since the 1990s to help address migration. drug trafficking and transnational crime.

In executive orders signed Monday, Trump suggested the military would help the Department of Homeland Security with “detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services.”

In his first term, Trump ordered active duty troops to the border in response to a caravan of migrants slowly making its way through Mexico toward the United States in 2018. More than 7,000 active duty troops were sent to Texas, Arizona and California, including military police, an assault helicopter battalion, various communications, medical and headquarters units, combat engineers, planners and public affairs units.

At the time, the Pentagon was adamant that active duty troops would not do law enforcement. So they spent much of their time transporting border patrol agents to and along the border, helping them erect additional vehicle barriers and fencing along the border, assisting them with communications and providing some security for border agent camps.

The military also provided border patrol agents with medical care, pre-packaged meals and temporary housing.

It's also not yet clear if the Trump administration will order the military to use bases to house detained migrants.

Bases previously have been used for that purpose, and after the 2021 fall of Kabul to the Taliban, they were used to host thousands of Afghan evacuees. The facilities struggled to support the influx.

In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, to prepare to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children, but the additional space ultimately wasn’t needed and Goodfellow was determined not to have the infrastructure necessary to support the surge.

In March 2021, the Biden administration greenlighted using property at Fort Bliss, Texas, for a detention facility to provide beds for up to 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children as border crossings increased from Mexico.

The facility, operated by DHS, was quickly overrun, with far too few case managers for the thousands of children that arrived, exposure to extreme weather and dust and unsanitary conditions, a 2022 inspector general report found.

Construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Members of the Mexican National Guard patrol as construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Members of the Mexican National Guard patrol as construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Volunteers talk in a tent along a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Volunteers talk in a tent along a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Dogs are near a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Dogs are near a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

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