1. Smoke plume rising from fire zone along ridge line
2. Fire and smoke
3. Close shot of fire
4. Wide shot of fire and smoke
6. Mid shot of fires
7. Firefighters dousing burned out area with water
8. Wide shot of horses in ranch compound near burned out area
9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Connie Collins, Resident:
"If you picture the world ending, this is what it looks like. It just come around the corner - smoke, flames - just fire department, everything. You're thinking, god I hope everybody gets their animals out, everybody gets themselves out. And it was just absolutely.... horrific."
"A lot of this fuel has not been burned for a long time. Drought puts a stress on the fuel which causes a lot of downed dead fuel. And so we have this mixture and it's creating a bunch of problems. In addition to that we have a nice, I shouldn't say nice, but we have an extremely hot, dry summer and when you have fuels and weather mixed like that if there's a fire then it really gets erratic and hot."
Firefighters continued to battle patches of wildfire burning in rural areas 60 miles (96 kilometres) northeast of Los Angeles on Wednesday.
So far, the Crown Fire has burned across more than 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) after erupting late on Tuesday and raging through the area during the night.
About 2,000 firefighters were battling the blaze that was about 25 per cent contained by Wednesday morning.
So far officials say the Crown Fire has destroyed a mobile home, an abandoned house and bridge.
Meanwhile, firefighters have gained the upper hand on two other large wildfires in the area, allowing weary crews to be transferred to the Crown Fire.
The area is thick with thousands of dead juniper and pine trees that were ravaged by six years of drought and an infestation of bark beetles.
Winds gusting up to 25 miles per hour (40 kilometres per hour) and temperatures in the high 90s degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) pushed flames past ranch homes between Acton and Palmdale California, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometres) north of downtown Los Angeles.
The hot, dry weather has helped spread a series of southern California fires in the past week.
Threatened communities have so far avoided the large-scale loss of homes that occurred during wildfires last fall (autumn), but officials warned that the fire season is young.
