Firefighters battle heat, wind
2008-07-09 09:43
Big Sur - Firefighters pushed back a blaze threatening this small coastal community in northern California just enough to allow hundreds of people to check on their homes on Tuesday as a separate fire 483km north forced residents of other towns to evacuate.
Fire crews have been straining to cover 330 active California wildfires, many of which were ignited by a lightning storm more than two weeks ago. A heatwave forecast to linger in much of the state until the weekend was making the job all the more difficult.
Winds of up to 48km/h fanned a blaze in Butte County, where firefighters went door to door overnight to evacuate 800 to 1 000 residents from the towns of Concow and Yankee Hill, about 137km north of Sacramento. Nearby Paradise, where a fire destroyed 74 homes last month, was also ordered evacuated, along with Ono, a rural town about 274km north of Sacramento.
"Now you're in a hell of a fire fight," said Todd Simmons, a spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Five structures have been destroyed, and the complex of fires in Butte County was about 55% contained.
At least 23 homes and 25 other structures have been destroyed in the Big Sur area, where flames have marched over more than 324 square kilometres of forest land since June 21.
Although that fire is far from controlled - the rugged terrain has kept containment at 18% into the fire's third week - authorities lifted the mandatory evacuation order issued for 40km of the 50km stretch along the Pacific Coast Highway that had been closed.
Many of the 1 500 evacuated residents of Big Sur headed home on Tuesday morning through smoke and ash, anxious to gauge the damage.
Officials, however, cautioned that the lifted evacuation orders did not mean conditions had drastically improved.
"They still have an awful lot of active fire there. ... There were 2 500 residences still threatened," said US Forest Service spokesperson Juanita Freel. She added that officials were trying to be sensitive to residents' needs to check on their properties.
Some homes in southern Santa Barbara County also were still threatened by another fire in the Los Padres National Forest above the city of Goleta.
Mandatory evacuation orders were lifted for many of the 275 threatened homes, but 3 200 other homes were in areas where residents had been warned to be ready to leave. That fire is about 50% contained.
- AP