An out-of-control, wind-driven wildfire bore down on Santa Barbara on Wednesday, destroying 20 homes in the rugged central California foothills, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate and injuring three firefighters.
The fire, which ignited in the dry brush on Tuesday and was being investigated as an arson attack, had blackened 200 hectares around picturesque Santa Barbara by nightfall, leaving behind smoldering, burned out husks where multimillion-dollar mansions once stood.
Authorities said the pall of thick black smoke hanging over Santa Barbara made it difficult to tell how many of the large hillside homes had gone up in flames but believed at least 20 had been burned to the ground.
PHOTO: AP
Entire neighborhoods remained in jeopardy as more than 900 firefighters struggled to make headway against flames whipped by hot, dry Santa Ana winds through steep and sometimes inaccessible canyons.
“We are in a state of extreme emergency,” Santa Barbara County Fire spokesman David Sadecki said. “We’re running very, very thin.”
Sadecki said the blaze was difficult to fight because of the seaside community’s “extreme weather” — temperatures over 38°C, with winds gusting at up to 80kph.
The three firefighters suffered burn and respiratory injuries when their engine was engulfed in flame, its hoses burned through, as they tried to protect a home. All three men were taken by helicopter to a Los Angeles-area burn center for treatment.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for Santa Barbara County, a move that frees up additional funds and equipment.
Though the fire slowed as winds eased late on Wednesday night, officials worried that it was burning in the direction of downtown Santa Barbara and residents there were told they may need to evacuate overnight.
The firefighters were hoping for a break from the weather yesterday, but weather experts predicted that the Santa Ana winds, which blow in from the California desert, would persist at least another day.
Santa Barbara County was asking for aid from fire crews across the state and said they expected 100 engines and 400 firefighters, although other California communities were keeping a wary eye on their own dry hillsides.
Meanwhile in Arizona, firefighters battled a 1,700 hectare brush fire that broke out on Tuesday in a mountainous area 80km southeast of Tucson.
The blaze set in grass and woodland near Sierra Vista torched three homes and several vehicles and outbuildings.
A local homeowner was taken to a burn unit at a hospital in Phoenix for treatment, US Forest Service spokeswoman Celeste Gordon said. His condition late on Wednesday was not immediately known.
Last November, more than 200 homes were destroyed in Santa Barbara and surrounding communities in a brush fire that was blamed on a campfire started by local students.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion