Fueled by winds, largest wildfire moves near California city
ETHAN SWOPE and JOHN ANTCZAK
Firefighters faced dangerously windy weather Tuesday as they struggled to keep the nation's largest wildfire from moving toward a Northern California city and other small mountain communities.
Forecasters issued red flag warnings of critical fire weather conditions including gusts up to 40 mph (64 kph) from late morning to near midnight.
The warnings came after the Dixie Fire grew explosively from winds spawned by a new weather system that arrived Monday afternoon. It was about 8 miles (12.8 kilometers) from Susanville, population about 18,000, early Tuesday, fire spokesman Doug Ulibarri said.
Numerous resources were put into the Susanville area, where residents were warned to be ready to evacuate, said Mark Brunton, an operations section chief.
“It's not out of play, and the next 24 hours are going to be crucial to watch as to what the fire is going to do there,” he told an online briefing.
To the east, spot fires became established south of the small community of Janesville, which had been ordered evacuated. Some structures were lost there — images captured by The Associated Press showed a home consumed by flames — but a surge of firefighters was able to herd the fire around the majority of the town, Brunton said.
Firefighting managers warned to expect spot fires to up to 1 mile (1.61 kilometers) ahead of the main fire, Ulibarri said.
The Dixie Fire is the largest of nearly 100 major wildfires burning across more than a dozen Western states that have seen historic drought and weeks of high temperatures and dry weather that have left trees, brush and grasslands as flammable as tinder. Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Wilson Wong and Alicia Victoria Lozano
A rapidly expanding wildfire in Northern California prompted mandatory evacuation orders for thousands of residents and tourists in El Dorado County Tuesday morning.
The Caldor Fire was ignited Saturday evening in the Omo Ranch area, about 60 miles east of Sacramento, according to the U.S. Forest Service's El Dorado division.
More than 10,000 personnel have been deployed to help contain multiple fires throughout California, including the Caldor Fire, which has destroyed 6,500 acres and was zero percent contained as of Tuesday. It grew more than 4,000 acres in less than a day and continues to threaten structures, according to the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, or Cal OES.
"Night firefighting and challenging terrain made accessing the fire difficult," the El Dorado Sheriff's Office said in a statement. "The fire burned very actively throughout the night.
Authorities expanded evacuation orders for neighboring communities Tuesday morning - including for residents in Sly Park, Happy Valley and the Grizzly Flats and Somerset areas - while campers were rushed out of the Sly Park Recreation Area. Dark heavy smoke blanketed much of the region, including in nearby Lake Tahoe and other population destinations, prompting bumper-to-bumper traffic along evacuation routes.
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