A fast-growing wildfire on Thursday destroyed at least 80 homes near the riverside community of Lake Isabella in central California, as a threat to populated areas from five other major blazes across the state diminished, authorities said.
The Erskine Fire erupted at about 4pm in the foothills of Kern County, about 68km northeast of Bakersfield.
Within hours it exploded to cover between 1,200 to 2,000 hectares of drought-parched brush and grass, fire information Web site InciWeb said.
Photo: EPA / Kern County Fire Department
Fire officials also said power was knocked out as darkness fell and evacuation orders were in effect for more than 1,000 homes.
The flames were threatening about 1,500 structures in the area by Thursday night, InciWeb added.
Footage of the blaze carried on the Kern County Fire Department’s Facebook page showed flames consuming several homes and roaring through nearby foothills, as firefighting helicopters maneuvered around billowing black and white smoke.
Photo: AFP
The video showed entire blocks of homes devastated by the fire, with jets of flame seen shooting into the evening air from charred household gas canisters.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, though Kern County Fire Captain Tyler Townsend said some residents flouted evacuation orders. Up to 350 firefighters were battling the blaze and hundreds more were en route, InciWeb said.
Nearly 5,000 firefighters elsewhere around the state battled to control several major wildfires raging from the Klamath National Forest near Oregon to desert brush near the Mexico border.
Authorities said the danger was still high in some areas, despite making enough progress to lift evacuation orders for many residents, who had been forced to flee earlier this week.
The combination of high temperatures, gusty winds and low humidity could challenge crews and raise the risk of new blazes in the mountains of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the National Weather Service said.
In San Diego County, authorities lifted evacuation orders for the Mexican border community of Portrero on Thursday, saying crews had cut containment lines around a fifth of a wildfire that has blackened 2,752 hectares.
Evacuation orders remained in force for residents of two other mountain communities. Flames have already destroyed five homes and a dozen outbuildings since Sunday.
In foothills northeast of Los Angeles, authorities lifted evacuation orders on 534 homes on Wednesday as firefighters struggled to corral two wildfires that had merged, but evacuation orders stayed on 324 more homes.
The largest of the major California wildfires, the Sherpa Fire in Santa Barbara County, was largely contained by Thursday, with most evacuation orders lifted.
The Pony Fire, ignited by a lightning strike on June 7 in the Klamath National Forest, was 60 percent contained by Thursday.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS