Campers safe from mountain inferno
LOS ANGELES: More than 200 people were flown to safety after being trapped by a fast-moving bushfire near a popular camping area in northern California, officials said on Sunday.
The evacuees climbed aboard military helicopters after the blaze cut off ground escape routes from Mammoth Pool Reservoir in the Sierra National Forest, about 70km northeast of Fresno.
Flames moved in so quickly that at one point people were advised to “shelter in place” – in the reservoir itself if need be.
“Simply extraordinary, lifesaving work by the @CalGuard airlifting more than 200 people to safety overnight from the imminent danger of the #CreekFire,” army General Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said on Twitter.
Twenty of the evacuees were transported to area hospitals, the Madera County Sheriff’s Office reported on Twitter. At least two were seriously injured, according to the Fresno Fire Department.
Gen Hokanson tweeted a dramatic picture taken from the cockpit of a helicopter showing it surrounded by blazing trees.
He said dozens of those rescued were brought to California National Guard facilities and were met by military medics and first responders.
The Creek Fire, which started on Friday in steep and rugged terrain, has so far spread to 18,400ha, according to the US Forest Service, making it one of the largest blazes during a particularly busy fire season in the state.
California has been baking, with record-breaking temperatures expected over the three-day Labour Day weekend that would aggravate already dangerous fire conditions and further stressing exhausted firefighters.
Much of the state was suffering under scorching temperatures on Sunday – 43C in Los Angeles, 50C in Palm Springs and 54C in Death Valley – further fuelling the raging bushfires.
The high temperatures come as the state is recovering from another heatwave in mid-August and devastating fire that have burned some 600,000ha in the past three weeks, destroying hundreds of structures and forcing tens of thousands of Californians to evacuate.
The state on Monday was expected to pass a record for the “most acres burnt in the modern era”, Daniel Swain, a climate researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The Washington Post.
The newspaper wrote that radar data showed the formation of multiple fire tornadoes inside the blaze, which had burnt through the mountains and trapped campers. Vortices of the size and shape of tornadoes had formed within the fire and the smoke plume.