VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — Another wildfire, possibly sparked by a downed powerline, broke out Wednesday and forced the evacuation of buildings on a large central California military base where another blaze has been burning all week, officials said.
The new blaze broke out at 2 p.m. on the north side of the coastal, mostly undeveloped Vandenberg Air Force Base is unrelated to the other fire that's on the south side, base officials said.
The blaze, which had grown to at least 20 acres, brought the evacuation of administrative buildings, but was not yet a threat to any of the housing or key facilities on the base.
It is sending a great deal of smoke over Lompoc, a city of 40,000 people at the edge of the base, though the flames themselves are not threatening the city.
A preliminary report says a downed powerline sparked it. All traffic into the base has been stopped.
Resources were being diverted from the earlier fire that broke out over the weekend in a remote canyon and forced the postponement of a satellite launch. It was 70 percent contained and had burned about 19 square miles (49 square kilometers) of rugged land.
There was no word of any threatened structures on the sprawling base, much of which is undeveloped mountain land.
A California Highway Patrol investigator looks at the wreck of a water tender fire truck involved in a rollover crash near Vandenberg Air Force base that took the life of a Ventura County Fire Dept. firefighter and injured another firefighter Wednesday morning, Sept. 21, 2016, near Lompoc, Calif.
Photo Credit: Len Wood/The Santa Maria Times via AP
A firefighter died Wednesday and another was hurt when the water truck they were in overturned on a highway outside the city of Lompoc, miles from the fire lines.
Ventura County firefighter Ryan Osler was killed, and Adam Price was injured. There were no other occupants in the truck.
Neither fire posed an immediate threat to the base's launch complex that fires satellites into space.
Vandenberg encompasses nearly 156 square miles (405 square kilometers) along the Pacific Ocean.
