A six-alarm fire forced evacuations and sparked outages Tuesday in San Mateo County.
The evacuations tied to what officials are calling the Edgewood Fire were ordered in the Emerald Hills area near San Carlos and Redwood City. Officials in a media briefing reported a firefighter was hurt while battling the blaze and was transported to Stanford Hospital.
The blaze has burned at least 20 acres in the areas around Maple Street, Cal Fire said, adding numerous fire resources are on scene including air support. Flames were 42% contained as of 2 p.m.
Firefighters initially responded to the fire shortly after 2:20 p.m. in the area of Edgewood Road and Crestview Drive.
The California Highway Patrol reported smoke visible from Interstate 280.
“We’re battling some hot temps, luckily no wind, but expect heat through the night that’ll require us to stay out here until we have some containment,” said Chief Jonathan Cox of Cal Fire.
The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office at 3:40 p.m. ordered evacuations for residents in Zonehaven zones RWC-E002 and RWC-E003 and recommended evacuations for people in zone WSD-E099.
An evacuation center was set up at 1455 Madison Street in Redwood City before being lifted around 8:30 p.m.
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Stop lights stopped working, leaving drivers to fend for themselves along Ralston Avenue, and other locations.
PG&E said that up to 10,000 customers lost power including Dmitri Bountouvas’s house. But he was ready for it.
“We primarily put the solar panels in for PG&E outages,” he said. “Whenever we’ve had them in the last two years we have a back up supply to get the refrigerators running, it’s pretty good.”
All the while, Cal Fire and crews from all over the Peninsula went at the flames with everything they had, in the air and on the ground.
PG&E joined in, spraying fire retardant on power poles to stop a bad situation from getting worse.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
