One person was killed in a rapidly moving wildfire that yesterday sent residents fleeing from a northern California city, as flames burned homes and businesses and knocked out power, fire officials said.
A bulldozer operator was killed in the so-called Carr Fire, a blaze in Shasta County that has tripled in size in the past two days to 11,300 hectares, the state’s forestry and fire protection department said.
The blaze has crossed the Sacramento River and threatens hundreds of homes on the western fringes of the city of Redding, fire officials said.
Photo: AFP
“The fire is moving so fast that law enforcement is doing evacuations as fast as we can. There have been some injuries to civilians and firefighters,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) spokesman Scott McLean told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
“It’s way too dynamic and burning quickly,” he said.
Local and state fire officials were not available to confirm details of injuries.
Roads out of the city of 90,000 people were jammed with motorists trying to escape the flames, social media postings showed.
More than 1,700 firefighters were battling the blaze, Cal Fire said in an evening advisory.
“Right now they’re doing what they can, they’re trying to make a stand where they can, if possible,” McLean said. “It’s extreme. It’s blowing up off and on again.”
The wildfire was in an area of rolling hills and not in “house-to-house neighborhoods,” he added.
Multiple power outages were reported, the city said on its Web site, adding that the electric utility was shutting off power in its northern areas.
California Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Shasta and Riverside counties over the Carr and Cranston fires, which were being supercharged by temperatures of more than 37°C, erratic winds and low humidity.
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