All firefighters were taken off the mountain earlier his morning, he said. Mt. Wilson Road, a narrow, winding two-lane road has been closed since 6 a.m. Dombroski said it is too dangerous to have firefighters near the communication towers and the observatory complex.
Firefighters plan to use fixed-wing aircraft to drop fire retardant on the mountain, he said.
The fire, which has destroyed 21 homes and killed two firefighters, was also moving quickly to the west, burning to within a few miles of Santa Clarita as well as near Sylmar. No evacuations have been made in those areas, and it’s unclear how close the western edge of the blaze is to homes.
Inspector Edward Osorio of the Los Angeles County Fire Department estimated property damage from the fire at $7,671,000 and rising.
The fire is expected to move in a northeasterly direction, and officials are putting significant resources on the northern edge of the fire near Acton.
Officials said the goal for today was to keep the fire west of Highway 39 and Angeles Crest Highway; south of Highway 14, Pearblossom Highway and Highway 138; east of Interstate 5 and north of the foothill communities along the Angeles National Forest border.
Mt. Wilson was believed doomed last night, but Osorio said aggressive brush clearance by crews and drops of fire retardant from the air seem to have helped.
“At this point, I don’t think it suffered any serious damage. We’ll probably get some flare-ups or threatening flame activity, but we don’t think it’s going to be a major problem,” he said.
The Station fire doubled in size to 85,000 acres overnight and destroyed more structures.
“That fire burned just like it was daytime. Usually you get recovery because humidity goes up at night, which slows the fire down and you’re able to construct more line around the fire,” said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Nathan Judy. “But last night that wasn’t the case.”
The exact number of homes consumed by the Station fire remains unclear, but officials said several homes south of Acton were lost last night and this morning. Earlier, 21 homes in the Tujunga Canyon area were lost, but officials expect that number to rise.
More neighborhoods were evacuated overnight as the fire pushed in three directions.
“We are making progress, but it is very slow and very dangerous,” incident commander Mike Dietrich of the U.S. Forest Service said at a news conference this morning. “We have to wait for the fire to come to us.”
At the bottom of Mt. Wilson Road early this morning, firefighters bedded down in the ash-flecked open air, the forest pitch black except for the flames lighting ridgelines in the near distance. The head of the fire appeared to be across a broad and deep canyon from the Mt. Wilson compound.
Smaller flare-ups could be seen closer to the thicket of communications towers alongside the Mt. Wilson observatory, where five engine crews were posted overnight.
The blaze already had raced up to the winding stretch of Angeles Crest Highway that leads to Mt. Wilson Road. Road signs had melted, guardrails were burned free of their wood moorings, and the switchbacks were choked with fire-loosened boulders and scorched tree limbs.
Two firefighters were killed when they drove off the side of a treacherous road in the Mt. Gleason area, south of Acton, around 2:30 p.m. Sunday, said Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bryant. They were later identified as Arnaldo Quinones, 35, of Palmdale and Tedmund Hall, 47, of San Bernardino County.
Read more here: Fire moves west toward Santa Clarita, Sylmar; Mt. Wilson in peril