TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

A small plane crashed Sunday morning in rugged terrain in Blackburn Canyon southeast of Tehachapi, sparking a massive, unpredictable fire that burned uncontrolled through the mountains near the Old West Ranch community which was savaged by fire just a little more than a year ago.

Two men -- flying out of Cable Airport in Upland -- died in the plane crash, which happened around 11:30 a.m.

The fire roared deep into heavy brush and climbed onto forested hillsides, devouring more than 3,500 acres in the Blackburn Canyon area by nightfall Sunday -- more than doubling the size of the destructive West fire in one afternoon.

Over the evening the fire grew to just under 4,800 acres with a second day of high winds expected to challenge the small army of firefighters and equipment assigned to the blaze.

The fire was only five percent contained, said Engineer Cary Wright of Kern County Fire Department.

One home was destroyed and evacuations were ordered in a massive swath of the mountains south of Tehachapi, from Old West Ranch in the east to Water Canyon Road on the west.

Some 650 residents and 150 outbuildings were threatened by the fire by Monday morning, according to Kern County Fire reports.

Despite the evacuation order, the Tehachapi News reported that some residents of Old West Ranch knew neighbors and friends in the self-sufficient enclave who were refusing to leave.

The 2010 West fire consumed 1,658 acres, gutted 23 homes, 41 outbuildings and damaged another six homes.

More than 600 firefighters, 45 bulldozers, 7 helicopters, 6 air tankers and a massive DC 10 were battling Sunday's blaze by Monday morning, according to Kern County Fire Department reports.

"You can see the smoke and the wind just swirling around," said Wright Sunday afternoon. "The black-grey smoke is just pumping out. It's a very aggressive fire. It's a very angry fire."

John Nuckolls, 55, and his friend, identified only as Walt, were doing a fly-by of a friend's home near Tehachapi in Walt's six-seat Cessna 210 Sunday, said Nuckolls' son Justin Nuckolls, when a gust of wind apparently caught the plane and slammed it into a hillside.

Justin Nuckolls drove up from his home in Rancho Cucamonga when he heard news of the crash and confirmed his father and his friend had been killed. Nuckolls didn't know Walt's last name but said he was in his late 60s or early 70s.

"My dad loved to fly. He'd owned a plane for 12 years," Nuckolls said. "He loved the river, loved family and loved flying his plane."

The elder Nuckolls had owned, then sold, a steel fabrication company. He kept busy with some consulting, investments and a gym he owned, Justin Nuckolls said.

But he was "a big joker" who was the patriarch of a large family with four brothers, a sister, five children of his own and eight grandchildren.

The younger Nuckolls struggled with emotion as he talked about his father's death.

"I'm glad it was something he loved," Nuckolls said.

Wright said the blaze sparked by the crash, called the Canyon fire, was tough to fight and unpredictable on Sunday.

"The winds are blowing (and) the topography is such that you can't take hoses up in there and fight this fire," he said. "We're trying to get out in front of it."

Firefighters worked to slow the fire with aerial water drops while the sun was up, and worked to cut fire lines around the blaze with bulldozers, Wright said.

But the blaze changed direction three times during the afternoon, keeping firefighters on their toes. "Several times its swirled around in the direction of the incident command post," Wright said.

One of those times, said Cmdr. Joe Pilkington of the Kern County Sheriff's Department, a number of deer fleeing the blaze ran right through the command post.

According to Bert Bockover, a former resident of the Old West Ranch area whose mobile home burned in the West fire, the plane that crashed came down on the property of another West fire victim, George Plesko.

Plesko's home on Snowshoe Lane, and most of his land, were burned by the West fire. Bockover said Plesko tried to put out Sunday's blaze by stomping on it, but succeeded only in burning his feet. The fire burned the portions of Plesko's property that the West fire didn't get, Bockover said.

During the battle with the Canyon fire, a firefighting helicopter also went down.

Pilkington said the aircraft made a hard landing outside the immediate fire area and was "out of the fight" with a "fried" engine. No one in the helicopter was injured, he said.

Evacuees from Sunday's fire were being directed to the old Jacobsen Jr. High campus on Anita Drive.

-- Staff photographer Jaclyn Borowski contributed to this story.