Homes destroyed in fire
DISASTER: No details given as at least one person dies in blaze
LAKEPORT, Calif. — At least 400 homes and hundreds of other buildings have gone up in flames and one person has been killed in a Northern California wildfire that ranks as the most destructive this summer in the U.S. West, officials said on Monday.
The so-called Valley Fire, which erupted Saturday afternoon and spread quickly to a cluster of small communities in the hills and valleys north of the Napa County’s wine-producing region, has also displaced thousands of residents under expanded evacuations.
By Monday morning the blaze had devoured about 24,690 hectares of tinder-dry forests, brush and grasslands, and was only about 5 per cent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
About 16,190 hectares of the landscape were consumed in the first 12 hours of the fire at the peak of its intensity on Saturday and early Sunday, stoked by high winds.
Fire officials described the rapid initial rate of spread as nearly unprecedented, a consequence of vegetation desiccated by four years of drought and weeks of extreme summer heat.
Four firefighters were hospitalized with second-degree burns in the early hours of the blaze on Saturday.
One civilian fire fatality was confirmed on Monday by Lake County Sheriff’s spokesman Lieutenant Steve Brooks. But Brooks gave no details about the circumstances or the victim’s identity.
Cal Fire field battalion chief Mike Smith said the blaze was still progressing, though its intensity was diminished by a weather phenomenon known as an inversion layer that had settled over the area.
Still, efforts to combat the blaze remained hampered by thick smoke which has grounded water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers, he said. More than 1,400 firefighters have been assigned to the blaze.
The communities of Cobb, Middletown, Hidden Valley Lake and the Harbin Hot Springs resort — located about 80 km west of Sacramento, the state capital — were reported to be hardest hit by the fire. Many residents were chased from their homes with little or no warning.
Video footage from Middletown, a village of about 1,500 residents, showed a smoking, devastated scene of burned-out vehicles, twisted, blackened debris and charred foundations of buildings that had been reduced to ash.
Cal Fire on Monday reported that at least 400 homes and hundreds of other structures were consumed.
The bulk of the destruction is believed to have occurred on Saturday.
That tally ranks as the greatest loss of property from a single blaze this season in California, or among the scores of wildfires that have ravaged the drought-stricken Western U.S. so far this summer, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
The property toll is expected to climb as damage-assessment teams reach areas of the fire zone yet to have been surveyed, but no additional communities were under immediate threat on Monday morning, Smith said.