KESQ Channel 3
Fire burns alongside freeway
LOS ANGELES Some 100 firefighters are battling a blaze in the brush alongside the westbound lanes of the one-18 freeway near the Los Angeles-Simi Valley border.
Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey says the fire has consumed between one and one-and-a-half acres just north of the freeway.
He says it began burning at around a quarter to four this morning and may have been started by a vehicle fire.
Humphrey says crews from L-A County and Ventura County have joined the city firefighters, and that they are attacking the blaze from the ground and air.
But he says the steep terrain and winds of ten miles per hour are hampering firefighters efforts.
A C-H-P spokesman says only the car pool lane is open on westbound one-18 east of Rocky Peak Fire Road. The closures are likely to last for an hour to hour and a half.
The fire area is at the opposite end of the freeway from the museum, over 15 miles apart.
Usually when the fire starts near this point at Rocky Peak (where Manson's gang hid out), it burns to the SW, jumps the freeway and continues on past Hope Ranch toward Malibu; these fires could meet up.