Firefighters Knock Down Blaze Next to Freeway
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PORTER RANCH — About 175 Los Angeles city and county firefighters battled a brush fire along the Ronald Reagan Freeway on Thursday.
No one was injured or evacuated, and one house suffered minor damage, authorities said.
Two westbound lanes of the freeway were closed as firefighters extinguished the fire in three spots near the Tampa Avenue exit.
The fire, which started about 11:45 a.m. and was spread by Santa Ana winds of up to 35 mph, took nearly an hour to put out, said Capt. Steve Ruda, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman.
The fire, which burned in a four-acre area, may have been caused by the backfire from a truck, Ruda said.
“The fire jumped the freeway because of the sparks and then was driven by the wind,” he added.
Four water-dropping helicopters helped fight the fire, Ruda said. Firefighters got an early start because they were on a red flag alert due to the high winds, he said.
One house in the 19100 block of Ludlow Street, which firefighters consider a buffer zone, suffered minor damage to its wood-shingle roof, Ruda said.
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