Firefighters gain ground against blaze
– An army of firefighters in northern California gained ground on Monday against a wildfire that has killed six people and caused far more devastation over the past week than any of the scores of blazes raging across the tinder-dry American West this summer.
The Carr Fire has burned in and around Redding, California, a city of 90 000 residents about 260km north of the state capital Sacramento, since last Monday, reducing more than 800 homes to ash.
So far its footprint of scorched landscape has grown to nearly 420 000 hectares– more than triple San Francisco’s land mass.
Redding
But helped by calmer winds, fire crews had carved buffer lines around 23% of its perimeter by late Monday, up from just 5% during much of the past week.
The 36 000 firefighters, however, remained hampered by a lingering heat wave.
In another positive sign, authorities began allowing some displaced residents to return home, though an estimated 37 000 people still remained under mandatory evacuation orders.
The blaze stands as the deadliest of nearly 100 conflagrations burning from Texas to Oregon.
The Carr, one of 17 California wildfires, has claimed the lives of two firefighters and at least four civilians in the Redding area, including two young children and their great-grandmother, who according to family members perished while huddled under a wet blanket.
Authorities said they were still searching for seven people listed as missing since Thursday night, when gale-force winds whipped the blaze into a firestorm that jumped the Sacramento River and roared without warning into Redding and adjacent communities.
Whole neighbourhoods, including the town of Keswick outside Redding, were laid to waste as residents fled for their lives in a chaotic evacuation. – Reuters