Electrical tower investigated as possible ignition point of Saddleridge fire
LOS ANGELES - Roberto Delgado and his wife, Ninoschka Perez, were finishing their nightly rosary prayer Thursday when Perez screamed. Startled, Delgado looked out their second-story window and saw a patch of flame burning near the base of a tall electrical transmission tower on the steep hill behind their home on Saddle Ridge Road.
The Sylmar couple rushed downstairs and began hosing down their yard as powerful winds pushed the expanding fire toward their neighborhood. Delgado held the hose in one hand and his phone in the other - the Fire Department was on its way. By the time firefighters arrived, flames had formed a tunnel of fire, rising up on either side of a service road that runs up to the power lines.
Those flames, fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds, scorched a 7,900-acre path through the hills in the northwest San Fernando Valley over the next
