In a word, San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig said, damage from the Blue Cut fire has been devastating. “A lot of homes lost yesterday," Hartwig said at a news conference Wednesday morning. “Yesterday, it hit hard, it hit fast, it hit with an intensity that we haven’t seen before,” Hartwig said. “In my 40 years of fighting fire I’ve never seen a fire behavior so extreme as it was yesterday,” Wakoski said. “If we ask you to leave, you have to leave,” John Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, told reporters.

Source: Los Angeles Times August 17, 2016 17:26 UTC