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.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS