Fire crews fanned out on Friday across a parched California where wind-whipped wildfires have forced hundreds of people to flee their homes and led to an emergency declaration in Santa Cruz County.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Lockheed Fire has blackened close to 20km² of remote wilderness and prompted mandatory evacuations of the mountain communities of Swanton and Bonny Doon, which have about 2,400 residents and several wineries.
Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi declared a state of emergency for Santa Cruz County as a step toward getting federal assistance for local governments and private property owners.
“We’re entering the height of fire season in California. We need to prepare,” he said in Davenport, a coastal town near the Lockheed Fire.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was out of state attending the funeral of his mother-in-law, Eunice Shriver, was scheduled to visit the fire zone for a briefing yesterday morning.
The blaze started on Wednesday about 16km north of Santa Cruz. By Friday evening, it was 15 percent contained, CalFire spokesman Daniel Berland. A change in winds has shifted the fire away from Bonny Doon, but a little closer to Swanton, he said.
Berland credited Bonny Doon residents with putting up a “defensible space” by clearing brush and debris from around their homes.
The fire sent huge plumes of smoke across Monterey Bay. It damaged two small structures and was threatening more than 1,000 homes and buildings.
There have been no reports of injuries. The cause is under investigation.
The steep, rugged terrain and dense vegetation has made it difficult to contain the blaze, so firefighters are focused on keeping flames away from homes, said Jim Stunkel, a battalion chief from San Jose.
“As the brush ignites, it’s like a fireworks explosion, and the sparks rain down where the ranch houses are,” he said.
The fire was moving toward Bonny Doon and more populated areas around Highway 9. As winds picked up on Friday afternoon, officials worried the gusts could ignite more fires and force more evacuations.
“The winds are going in so many different directions at the same time ... We can’t build a line big enough,” said Rick Hutchinson, a CalFire incident commander. “Unfortunately, if it does advance far enough to the southeast, it could ultimately lead to an evacuation of the Highway 9 area.”
Farther down the coast, about 2,000 firefighters battled a wildfire in the Los Padres National Forest that grew to nearly 280km², US Forest Service spokeswoman Maeton Freel said.
In Yuba County north of Sacramento, two separate wildfires began on Friday. The blazes blackened a combined 1,000 acres near Lake Francis, destroyed one home, forced the evacuation of about 60 residences and knocked out power in the Sierra foothills town of Dobbins, CalFire spokeswoman Joann Cartoscelli said.
In far northern California, firefighters lifted evacuation orders issued accompanying a nearly 3.2km² fire burning near Lewiston, about 321km north of Sacramento. The Coffin Fire was 75 percent contained, with containment expected yesterday.
Trinity County District Attorney Michael Harper charged 60-year-old Brenda Eitzen of Los Molinos with two felonies and two misdemeanors alleging she negligently sparked the blaze by throwing away a lit cigarette on Wednesday. The charges could bring a maximum four-year prison term. Eitzen, who has no criminal history, was staying at a drug rehabilitation shelter at the time of the fire, Harper said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the