New fires sweep through California
LOS ANGELES — Firefighters toiled in stifling heat Saturday on the lines of destructive wildfires across the U.S. West, making progress against some blazes while struggling to tame others that have forced evacuations of hundreds of homes.
In heat-stricken Southern California, powerful winds that sent an overnight inferno hopscotching through the Santa Barbara County community of Goleta vanished in the morning, allowing firefighters to extinguish smoldering ruins of an estimated 20 structures, including homes.
Authorities announced that mandatory evacuation orders were being reduced and many of the 2,500 people who fled Friday night would be able to return.
The fire’s spread was stopped at about 100 acres in a neighborhood where some houses were in ruins while homes next door were intact.
Elsewhere in Southern California, firefighters increased containment of a central San Diego County fire that rapidly spread over 400 acres, destroyed 18 structures and damaged eight, and a wildfire in the San Bernardino National Forest was holding at 1.5 square miles and forced evacuation of about 700 homes in the mountain community of Forest Falls.
Among new fires, a blaze erupted on a steep mountain slope just above the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank and helicopters pounded it with water.
Further up north and just south of the California-Oregon border, the 34-square-mile Klamathon Fire in rural Siskiyou County was 5 percent contained.
Elsewhere in California, the 138-square-mile County Fire northwest of Sacramento was nearly 50 percent contained. Ten structures were destroyed.
In Utah, authorities allowed the return of some residents who fled a wildfire near a fishing lake 80 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. The blaze has burned about 75 square miles and destroyed 90 structures, including homes, cabins, sheds and garages, since starting July 1 in the mountains.
In Colorado, firefighters took advantage of occasional rainstorms to extend their containment lines.
In the south, crews contained about 45 percent of a 167-squaremile fire that has destroyed more than 130 homes, while in Rocky Mountain ski country firefighters from 20 states were battling an 8-square-mile wildfire above the Roaring Fork Valley. Commanders said they hoped for one-third containment by late Sunday.
Crews also had 50 percent containment of a southwestern Colorado fire that has blackened 85 square miles north of Durango. Authorities said that storms could produce flash floods and mudslides in burn scars.
In central Colorado’s Park County, crews encircled a third of a fire that forced the Buffalo Creek Wilderness to close. A stretch of U.S. 285 between Fairplay and Antero Junction reopened Saturday.