Residents in 3 Tiny High Desert Towns on a Nervous Fire Watch

Hot winds stirred up dust and dying embers along a smoldering ridgeline Thursday afternoon as residents of Three Points, Tweedy Lake and Lake Hughes watched red-brown smoke from the advancing fire and wondered what would happen next.

The Pine fire east of Gorman already had destroyed two homes, charring more than 11,000 acres and continuing to spread. The fate of the three tiny communities on the northern edge of the Angeles National Forest was far from assured.

Three Points and Lake Hughes are essentially just wide spots in the road, a few homes and businesses scattered along a dry, brushy gully that marks the course of the San Andreas fault. The combined population of the two communities is about 500.

Tweedy Lake isn’t even a wide spot, because there is no road -- at least not a paved one. It’s a small, gated community of about 30 rustic cabins surrounding an isolated pond about a mile east of Three Points.

A sign nailed to a tree tells visitors which wheel tracks to follow to get to the residents’ homes.

The fire had appeared to be largely under control Wednesday evening and residents had begun to relax. Then, about 10 p.m., the wind picked up and the fire began to move, spreading north and east and wrapping around Three Points and Tweedy Lake.

As people grabbed what they could and fled, two houses burned in Three Points, a place defined by the only business in town, a little red-shingled restaurant named the Three Point Cafe. A third house in the area burned Thursday.

Three Points resident Tammy Brazil said everyone had gathered in the cafe Monday night, when word first spread about the fire.

Brazil said no one ate anything. “They just sat and watched,” she said.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, everyone left.

By Thursday afternoon, 600 homes scattered throughout the area had been evacuated and Three Points was deserted. The only sound was the wind, scudding through yards littered with trash and abandoned cars. A sign on the cafe read “closed.” Temperatures hovered at close to 100 degrees.

The smoke and ash had stung Dave Smiley’s eyes as the glow from the fire grew brighter and brighter during the night. It was about 2:30 a.m. Thursday before the retired Delta Airlines inspector realized the flames were headed for his home at Tweedy Lake, and it was time to act.

He said he woke his wife, Carol, and then got on the phone, alerting his neighbors.

“We’re a pretty tight group. I wasn’t leaving without putting out a call,” he said.

Flames climbed 100 feet or more as Smiley and his wife fled in their sport utility vehicle. Embers swirled through clouds of smoke that at times limited visibility to a few yards, and for a time it seemed that Tweedy Lake was doomed. But the wind shifted and the community was spared.

Some of the residents of Three Points and Tweedy Lake headed for Lake Hughes, about eight miles to the east and for the time seemingly safer. Lake Hughes isn’t much, but it does have a small grocery store, a bar/restaurant, an antique shop and an old Texaco station that no longer sells gas.

Raymond Cox, 75, and his wife, Gloria, were sitting in front of the gas station Thursday, beside their small mobile home. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the hot air.

Cox said that when the fire began spreading, he decided to move out of their house.

“We’re going to stay right here until it’s safe,” he said.

JoAnn Lavelle Harris, 65, a member of a family that has lived in a small wooden house on the outskirts of Lake Hughes since the 1920s, said that at least for now the family had decided not to leave.

“We’re keeping our faith that someone upstairs is protecting us,” she said. “But we’re sleeping with one eye open.”

Another member of the family, Tammy Lavelle Adams, 43, said Lake Hughes is a tight community, “and people keep calling me, telling me they’ve got a place for me.”

A few refugees from the fire headed for Neenach, a collection of small houses and mobile homes strewn along California 138, about five miles north of the fire.

Neenach, with a population of 850, is on the flats of the western Antelope Valley, an area with not much brush, just a little grass and a lot of dirt. And a lot of residents who opened their doors to the evacuees.

“Here, everyone helps everyone out,” said resident Elva Reisner.

Smoke from the Pine fire drifted 60 miles south to the Los Angeles Basin, prompting the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services to issue an “extreme caution advisory” for people with heart and respiratory ailments.

In rural Kern County, about 25 miles north of the Pine fire, a 500-acre blaze was 90% contained late Thursday after burning a house and a motor home in Cameron Canyon.

In Riverside County, officials said a 3,700-acre fire in the San Jacinto Mountains was continuing to burn, but light rain fell and the blaze was expected to be fully contained by Saturday night. A 150-acre fire near Lake Elsinore was under control.

In San Diego County, an 8,500-acre blaze near Lake Henshaw was fully controlled Thursday morning.

The National Weather Service said the heat wave was expected to ease over the weekend, with readings in the upper 80s to low 100s expected in Southern California’s inland valleys.