Firefighters Continue to battle hundreds of Wildfire blazes in California
Pastor Dale Morgan
Firefighters Continue to battle hundreds of Wildfire blazes in California*
* Story Highlights
* NEW: Growing fire in Monterey County forces new evacuations in
Carmel Valley
* Hundreds of wildfires started by weekend storm that packed 8,000
lightning strikes
* Firefighters from neighboring states on hand to help with
California blazes
* Fires have scorched thousands of acres, forced hundreds to evacuate
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Fire crews from Nevada and Oregon have
arrived to help California firefighters battle hundreds of blazes that
have darkened skies over the San Francisco Bay area and the Central Valley.
The lightning-caused fires have scorched tens of thousands of acres and
forced hundreds of residents to flee their homes, though few buildings
have been destroyed, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Public health officials have issued air-quality warnings.
"It's just extremely, extremely dry," Berlant said Tuesday. "That means
any little spark has the potential to cause a large fire. The public
needs to be extra cautious, because we don't need any additional wildfires."
Elsewhere in the state, residents were ordered to evacuate an area of
Monterey County on Wednesday because of a huge blaze that started before
the lightning storm.
More than 800 wildfires were started by an electrical storm that
unleashed nearly 8,000 lightning strikes across Northern California over
the weekend.
The storm was unusual not only because it generated so many lightning
strikes with little or no rain over a large geographical area but
because it struck so early in the season and moved in from the Pacific
Ocean. Such storms usually don't arrive until late July or August and
typically form southeast of California.
"You're looking at a pattern that's climatologically rare. We typically
don't see this happen at this time of summer," said John Juskie, a
science officer with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. "To see
8,000, that's way up there on the scale."
The lightning storm struck California as the state was experiencing one
of its driest years on record. Earlier this month, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought and directed agencies to
speed up water deliveries to drought-stricken areas. Many communities
have adopted strict conservation measures.
Areas hit the hardest by the weekend thunderstorm include Mendocino
County, where 131 fires have burned more than 13,000 acres and
threatened about 500 homes; Butte County, where 25 fires have burned
more than 3,900 acres and threatened 400 homes; and the Shasta-Trinity
Forest, where more than 150 fires have burned about 8,000 acres and
threatened 200 homes.
Firefighters continue to battle the state's largest blaze, a
90-square-mile, 58,000-acre fire that began more than two weeks ago in a
remote region of the Los Padres National Forest in southern Monterey
County. That fire was about 66 percent contained, but spreading flames
prompted officials to issue a mandatory evacuation order Wednesday
morning in the Arroyo Seco area of Carmel Valley.
A separate fire that has blackened 13 square miles in the forest's Big
Sur area was only about 3 percent contained.
Even before the lightning struck, California had seen an unusually large
number of destructive wildfires that had burned nearly 90,000 acres,
compared with 42,000 acres during the same period last year, according
to CalFire officials. The fire season typically does not peak until late
summer or early fall.
"This doesn't bode well for the fire season," said Ken Clark, a
meteorologist in Southern California with AccuWeather.com. "We're not
even into the meat of the fire season at this point, and the brush is
extremely dry. It's not going to get any better; it's going to get worse."