Moist air and calmer winds helped firefighters make progress Saturday on a deadly wildfire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the latest hot spot in an unprecedented fire season that has made much of California a disaster area.
Thousands of people evacuated from their homes twice during the last month began returning to Paradise in Northern California for the first time since Tuesday. About 300 homes remained threatened in and around the town, down from 3,800 homes on Friday, while officials said the fire was 55 percent contained.
“For the first time, we’ve really turned the corner,” said Kim Sone, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. “There’s more resources staffing the fire, and the weather has changed. We’re getting good relative humidity and the winds are subsiding.”
PHOTO: AP
An evacuation order remained in effect for the nearby town of Concow, where 50 homes were razed and one person was apparently killed this week after wind-propelled flames jumped a containment line. The person’s charred remains were found Friday in a burned-out home. The person has not been identified and a cause of death has not been determined.
The Butte County blaze is one of hundreds of wildfires that have blackened nearly 3,100km² and destroyed about 100 homes across California since a rare lightning storm ignited most of them three weeks ago.
Officials say more fires have been burning at one time this year than during any other period in recorded California history.
“This is truly a national disaster. The magnitude is incredible,” said Daniel Berlant, a state fire agency spokesman.
US Forest Service spokesman Jason Kirchner said firefighters have spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the blazes, and that does not include the economic cost to businesses, tourism and agriculture, or the impact on air and water quality.
Officials warn the state could suffer a lot more because fire danger is typically highest in Southern California in the fall, when hot dry winds could scour hillsides desiccated by a two-year drought.
“The ground is set for some really horrific events, bigger than we’ve seen so far,” Max Mortiz, co-director of the University of California Center for Fire Research & Outreach.
The conditions show a need for more research into the patterns of weather, wind and geography that could show where fires are likely to flare into infernos, he said.
About 20,000 firefighters from 41 states and Puerto Rico were fighting more than 320 active fires around the state, and more were on the way from Mexico, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered 2,400 National Guard troops to join the fire crews on the ground for the first time in more than 30 years.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS