California wild fire grows, 1,500 under evacuation orders
Fire officials say a blaze in northern California that drove more than 1,000 people to ee their homes grew overnight and was heading toward a sparsely populated area.
California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Emily Smith said Tuesday that the re in Lake County north of San Francisco is now nearly 46 square kilometres.
e blaze burning through dry brush, grass and timber has destroyed 12 homes since it started on Saturday and is threatening 600 structures. About 1,500 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders.
Officials say unusually hot weather, high winds and highly flammable vegetation turned brittle by drought helped fuel several res that began over the weekend.
ose same conditions led to the state’s deadliest and most de- structive re year in 2017.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday declared a state of emergency in Lake County, where the biggest re was raging about 190 kilometres north of San Francisco, a rural region particularly hard-hit by res in recent years. e declaration will enable o cials to receive more state resources to ght the re and for recovery.
Jim Steele, an elected supervisor, said the county is impoverished and its re- ghting equipment antiquated. He also said the county has just a few roads into and out of the region, which can hinder response time. Steele said the area has also been susceptible to re for many decades because dense brush and trees in the sparsely populated area, but the severity of the latest blazes is unexpected.
“What’s happened with the more warming climate is we get low humidity and higher winds and then when we get a re that’s worse than it’s been in those 50 years,” Steele said.
The fire that broke out Saturday evening has forced 3,000 residents from their homes and destroyed at least 22 buildings. It is the latest devastating blaze to rip through the isolated and impoverished county of just 65,000 people in the last few years.
“I think we’re all just so traumatized and overwhelmed with all these res year after year, this whole community is at a breaking point,” said Terri Gonsalves, 55, who evacuated her home around midnight Sunday.
She put four goats into her truck after she looked out her back window and saw a big hill a ame. She is staying with her daughter in nearby Middletown, a small city where dozens of homes were destroyed in 2015.
“When this stu happens, we rally around each other.”
Fire Battalion Chief Jonathan Cox said more than 230 reghters were battling the Lake County re in a rugged area that made it di cult to get equipment close to the blaze.