Fifty-mile-an-hour winds drove a fierce California wildfire across the Westmont College campus Thursday night, turning its tranquil grounds into a nightmarish inferno and temporarily trapping students and staff members in the gymnasium. No injuries have been reported, but the college’s Web site said several buildings, including more than a dozen faculty homes, had been “lost or significantly damaged.”

The fire, in Montecito in the coastal foothills east of Santa Barbara, reached the wooded campus early Thursday evening, interrupting some students during dinner, the Associated Press reported. Scott Craig, a spokesman for the 1,300-student Christian college, said he “saw flames about 100 feet high in the air shooting up with the wind just howling.”

The campus was quickly ablaze, Mr. Craig told AP Radio. “You’ve got palm trees and eucalyptus trees that are literally exploding with their hot oil, you’ve got these big, red-hot embers that are flying through the sky and are catching anything on fire.”

The college’s Web site last night listed structures partlly or completely destroyed as including “the Physics Building, the old math building, Bauder Hall, and the Quonset huts,” as well as the faculty homes. The college lost electricity after a natural-gas line broke, interrupting the fuel supply for the college’s generators. The Red Cross brought cots and blankets to the gym for people who wanted to remain there, but students and others who wanted to leave the campus were being allowed to do so.

The campus is located in an upscale residential neighborhood where the fire burned some 1,500 acres and destroyed at least 80 homes, according to the Los Angeles Times. The fire is not yet extinguished, but authorities believe they have contained it. —Lawrence Biemiller