‘Fire tornado’ caught on video at 150-acre brush fire near Gorman
A growing brush fire near Gorman on Wednesday evening produced an apparent “fire tornado,†footage captured by a television news helicopter showed.
The video, from KTLA-TV Channel 5, shows a swirling vortex of flames and a rising column of smoke. A firefighting helicopter is seen making a water drop on the inferno.
Firefighters were dispatched around 4:07 p.m. to the Sam fire near West Lancaster and Old Ridge Route roads, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
At the time, the blaze was estimated to be 4 acres, firefighters said.
Authorities soon upgraded the incident to a second-alarm brush fire.
The fire whirl, sometimes called a fire tornado, and short-range spotting were the result of “dry, receptive fuels and erratic winds from intense surface heating,†the Fire Department’s Air Operations Section said in a tweet.
Flash flooding in a Northern California burn scar triggered a massive debris flow that is now suspected of killing scores of Klamath River fish.
A fire whirl is generated when hot air surges upward and begins to spin. As it spirals, it can collect ash, smoke and embers and form a tight, spinning vortex.
More than 200 personnel were assigned to the fire, and crews were “making good progress,†according to a 5:16 p.m. tweet by the Fire Department.
The fire was being held at 150 acres, according to an update from the Fire Department shortly after 7 p.m. No structures were threatened, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Santa Clarita Valley station tweeted.
Further updates were not immediately available from authorities.
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