More than 100 homes burned in California blaze
- Story Highlights
- Three people suffer burns, 10 smoke inhalation
- Winds of up to 70 mph could fuel flames through Saturday
- Fire threatens roughly 1,500 homes in Montecito, officials say
- Fire covers about 2,500 acres in Santa Barbara County
SANTA BARBARA, California (CNN) -- A wind-driven brush fire roaring through the canyons of Santa Barbara County has burned more than 100 homes, injured 13 people and charred more than 2,500 acres, a county spokeswoman said.
Fire pours from a home ignited by a wildfire in Montecito, California, on Thursday night.
Michelle Mickiewicz said residents of more than 4,500 homes were ordered to evacuate as flames from the Tea Fire engulfed multimillion-dollar mansions and modest ranch-style homes north of Los Angeles. The blaze began Thursday evening.
Oprah Winfrey and Rob Lowe are some of the celebrities with homes in the upscale, oceanside enclave of Montecito. It was not known if any celebrities' homes have been damaged.
Large homes continued to burn Friday morning.
The fire threatened roughly 1,500 homes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
Winds calmed at daybreak Friday, slowing the spread of the fire, but were forecast to pick up to 50 mph to 70 mph through Saturday.
One firefighter suffered burns and was transferred to Sherman Oaks Burn Center. Two civilians who sustained burns were transported to the burn center in Irvine.
Ten were treated for smoke inhalation, officials said.
More than 500 firefighters are fighting the blaze.
A firefighter said overnight that the environment was ripe for a fire.
"A lot of the brush and trees and stuff are right up against the structures, and this one happened so fast that nobody had any advance warning at all, so there was really not much we could do or the homeowners could do in this case," he said.
"You can just hear the explosions ... of vehicles, homes," Michaelo Rosso told KCAL as he prepared to leave his home. "It sounds like the Fourth of July out here."
"It looked like lava coming down a volcano," resident Leslie Hollis Lopez told the Associated Press.
"We drove through tunnels of thick gray smoke," CNN's Paul Vercammen said. "Smoldering embers are floating everywhere. ... There's orange glows of similar burn areas all around us."
The flames roared onto the campus of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, forcing students and staff to take cover in the school gym.
Several buildings, including dormitories, the school's physics building and more than a dozen homes in Westmont's faculty housing area, have been lost or "significantly damaged" by the fire, the school said in a statement on its Web site.
College officials said they hope to evacuate to a Red Cross shelter as conditions permit.
Authorities ordered evacuations between Mountain Drive and Highway 192 and between Cold Springs and Sycamore Canyon Road in the Montecito area of Santa Barbara County.
Props to Drew for publishing the First Official Tea Fire Press Release. Hope you and everyone else are doing alright in smoldering Santa Barbara