Wildfires fanned by fierce desert winds consumed huge swaths of bone-dry Southern California on Monday, burning buildings and forcing evacuations from Malibu to San Diego, including a jail, a hospital and nursing homes.
More than a dozen wildfires had engulfed the region, killing at least one person, injuring dozens more and threatening scores of structures. Overwhelmed firefighters said they lacked the resources to save many houses.
"We have more houses burning than we have people and engine companies to fight them," San Diego Fire Captain Lisa Blake said. "A lot of people are going to lose their homes today."
Nearly 250,000 people were forced to flee in San Diego County alone, where hundreds of patients were being moved by school bus and ambulance from a hospital and nursing homes.
About a dozen blazes erupted over the weekend, feeding on drought-parched land from the high desert to the Pacific Ocean. One person was killed and several injured in a fire near the Mexican border, and dozens of structures have burned across the region.
Warm temperatures and strong winds created "dramatically worse" conditions overnight as flames shot 200 feet high, said Bill Metcalf, chief of the North County Fire Protection District.
The hospital and neighboring nursing homes in Poway, a San Diego suburb, were evacuating patients in ambulances and school buses, sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Knauss said.
In Orange County, a 1,049-inmate jail was being evacuated because of heavy smoke, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said. Inmates were being bused to another facility in Irvine.
All San Diego Police Department officers and off duty detectives were ordered to return to work to help with evacuations.
The fires have burned about 100,000 acres, or 156 square miles, in San Diego County, county Supervisor Ron Roberts said. Across the region, 40,000 acres, or 62 square miles, had burned by Sunday; among the structures destroyed in Malibu were a church, homes and a historic castle.
"This is a major emergency," Roberts said.
In many cases, crews couldn't begin to fight the fires because they were too busy rescuing residents who refused to leave, fire officials said.
"They didn't evacuate at all, or delayed until it was too late," Metcalf said. "And those folks who are making those decisions are actually stripping fire resources."
More than a dozen people were being treated at the UC San Diego Medical Center Regional Burn Center for burns and smoke inhalation, including four fighters - three in critical condition, officials said. Some of the injured were hikers, and others may be illegal immigrants.
One blaze devoured more than 5,000 acres in northern San Diego County and forced the evacuation of the community of Ramona, which has a population of about 36,000. Several structures were burned on the edge of town and sheriff's deputies called residents to alert them the fire was approaching the city, San Diego sheriff's Lt. Phil Brust said.
"The winds are up, it's very, very dangerous conditions," San Diego County spokeswoman Lesley Kirk said. "Fires are popping up all over the place."
Qualcomm Stadium, home to the NFL's Chargers, was added to a growing list of evacuation centers.