'Apocalyptic': Smoke Plumes From California Wildfire Captured From Plane Window

An airline passenger arriving into Los Angeles on Tuesday, September 10, was awestruck as they passed over towering plumes of smoke rising from the Line Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains.

“It looked apocalyptic,” according to Joshua Gobbell, who said he captured these images while flying from Austria into Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

At the time the video was taken on September 10, the fire, which started five days earlier on September 5, had burned 6,426 acres and was five-percent contained, fire officials said.

Two days later, on Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino County.

By Friday evening, the blaze had expanded across 38,074 acres and was at 25-percent containment, according to the San Bernardino National Forest.

Evacuation orders and warnings were in place for several parts of the county as more than 65,000 structures remained under threat from the fire, according to Cal Fire. Credit: Joshua Gobbell via Storyful