California fires threaten towns as winds loom to fan blazes
Homes, businesses see power cuts to prevent more blazes; mercury expected to stay high
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Cal Fire firefighters setting a hose line as they try to contain a fire near Milford, California. On Monday, California crossed a milestone of one million acres razed, the earliest it has reached that mark in history. Crews are battling 11 large blazes, including the Dixie Fire, the state's second-largest in history.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
SACRAMENTO • Wildfires in drought-stricken California threatened towns, severely injured two people and forced the evacuation of more than 21,000 residents on Tuesday, with the US state bracing itself for an early-season wind storm that could send flames raging out of control.
The fast-moving Caldor Fire, which swelled to 6,500 acres (2,600ha) on Tuesday in the hills east of Sacramento, was blazing with zero containment and injured two people who had to be air-lifted to medical facilities, said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
The department did not describe the nature of their injuries. California is struggling through one of its worst fire seasons on record, and conditions could deteriorate further in coming days.
Strong, dry winds were expected to hit the northern half of the state late on Tuesday, prompting utility company PG&E to start cutting power to about 51,000 homes and businesses to prevent its electrical lines from sparking more blazes.
The company said it would continue blacking out customers in small parts of 18 counties throughout Tuesday evening.
"Everything is just ready to burn," said Ms Emily Heller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. Low humidity and winds gusting as high as 56kmh will create dangerous conditions through late yesterday, she added.
Such wind storms more typically arrive in September and October, not August. "We have a trough passing to the north-east and when that happens, we get northerly winds, which tend to dry out portions of our area even more," Ms Heller said.
On Monday, California crossed a milestone of one million acres razed, the earliest it has reached that mark in history. Crews are battling 11 large blazes, including the Dixie Fire, the state's second-largest in history. It had grown to 626,751 acres as at late Tuesday on its way to destroying at least 1,208 structures, according to Cal Fire.
Across the Golden State, 6,540 fires this year have torched at least 1,857 structures. No deaths were reported through Monday.
Temperatures will linger in the 90s Fahrenheit through the rest of the week in the Sacramento area, Ms Heller said. In addition to dangerous conditions in California, red-flag fire warnings have also been posted across parts of Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and the Dakotas. Air quality alerts due to smoke pollution have spread across the West including through California's Central Valley and covering almost all of Idaho and Montana.
The Caldor fire, which started last Saturday, was threatening the towns of Grizzly Flats and Pollock Pines. It is a "rapidly developing incident because of the shifting winds, dry fuel and humidity levels around 10 per cent", said Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District spokesman Chris Vestal.
As drastic as California's fire season has been so far, it is still weeks away from its peak, when the Santa Ana and Diablo winds start to blow from the east.
BLOOMBERG
