Neighbors are horrified by the rapidly spreading Erskine fire in Lake Isabella.
The fire has burned more than 100 homes, 1,900 acres of land and has more than 600 firefighters working to contain it.
The hardest hit community was South Lake. Phone lines were dangling from burned poles, homes were reduced to ruble and families forced to evacuate.
A few miles away off McCray Road, neighbors told 23ABC how fast the fire spread.
"I drove in around 4:20 from LA and saw the smoke and thought, oh this isn't good. The fire was coming up the back side of my neighbor's house," resident Dion Agnew said.
He's owned his home since 2003 and just finished xeroscaping his front yard in March. He said his defensible space is what saved his home from this fire.
"It's booms, yeah they're big," Agnew said he had to run for cover yesterday afternoon when his neighbors' propane tanks exploded.
He continued saying the fire was moving so fast, firefighters didn't have a chance to get there in time. "The wind was blowing so fast, you couldn't see the fire, all you saw was the smoke coming in, and then you felt the heat and knew the fire was on you."
"It's absolutely horrifying," Mindi Clifton, a 30 year resident in Lake Isabella said.
Clifton and her firefighting neighbors got to work Thursday evening spraying down their homes with the hose. Clifton said that's all she's been doing, all night into Friday.
Now fire crews accompanied by water dropping helicopters and planes are working to contain the fire that started at the junction of Erksine Creek Road and Apollo Way.
