Nearly 1,700 firefighters were battling a raging blaze on Sunday that has already devastated nearly 40,000 acres of forest in California, a state hit by a persistent drought and just emerging from an acute heat wave.
The blaze, dubbed the “Mosquito Fire,” threatens 5,800 buildings and has already forced thousands of people to urgently evacuate their homes, according to the California Fire Agency.
Turned up Tuesday near Sacramento, it’s progressing extremely fast. The firefighters, who did not control it at all on Saturday night, managed to contain it to 10% overnight, thanks to a slight drop in temperatures and higher humidity. “But an acceleration of the winds helps it move north and northeast,” the agency specifies in its latest bulletin.
“We are used to seeing fires that slowly advance through the brush, but it is rare that we have these types of conflagrations,” said a spokesman for the fire department, Chris Vestal, questioned by the local television channel KSBW.
“If it burns down, we’ll lose everything…”
Firefighters, assisted by bulldozers and aerial means, and the police helped to evacuate small towns.
“A sheriff had to drive through the fire to pick us up,” Volcanoville resident Linda Gamble told KCRA 3. Lose…” she lamented.
In the south of the state, heavy rains, fueled by a tropical storm, meanwhile allowed firefighters to regain control Saturday of the ‘Fairview Fire’, which killed two people and burned 11,300 hectares near Los Angeles.
These rains put an end to the suffocating heat wave suffered for a week in the American West, where the mercury sometimes exceeded 45 ° C.
The region has been experiencing a historic drought for more than two decades, which scientists say is being exacerbated by human-induced climate change. It creates the conditions for repeated devastating fires.
Source: BFM TV
