ALTADENA : Firefighters Hold Practice on Site of Devastating Blaze
Dozens of firefighters gathered near Altadena on Thursday to practice fire suppression techniques in the area where thousands of acres of brush and several hundred homes burned last year.
The firefighters, from the Los Angeles County, Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena fire departments, planned a two-hour “wild land brush drill” that included water drops by helicopters, said county fire Inspector Rick Moreno.
The drill was conducted near the site of the Altadena fire that started Oct. 27, when winds whipped out of control a campfire that a transient had started to keep warm.
In that blaze and in the Calabasas-Malibu fire, which started Nov. 2, 22,000 acres of brush were burned, Moreno said.
Last year in the county, about 50,000 acres of brush burned, he added.
The latest brush fire occurred overnight in the Lancaster area, when 130 acres were blackened in a blaze evidently sparked by an explosion in a house being used as an illegal drug laboratory.
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