![]() ![]() The McKinney blaze marked the second major wildfire in California this season. Everything is gone," Schwander told Reuters on Sunday outside an American Red Cross evacuation shelter. My house is gone, all my furniture, all clothes, shoes, coats, boots. Newsom on Sunday declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County, a sparsely populated area larger than the state of Connecticut, hastening availability of government disaster response and relief.Īmong the fire evacuees was Harlene Althea Schwander, 81, an artist who moved to the area only a month ago to be near her son and daughter-in-law. In the meantime, crews focused much of their work carving fire containment lines along the Klamath River corridor to create a protective buffer near the towns of Yreka and Fort Jones, Freeman said.Ī layer of heavy smoke trapped close to the ground by low pressure, a phenomenon called an "inversion layer," also stunted fire growth since Sunday evening, though reduced visibility curbed firefighting aircraft operations, according to the Forest Service. "The one thing we've learned about thunderstorms is we can't predict what's going to happen," Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman said. Forest Service officials said.īut the same weather system also carried the potential for thunderstorms, and with it erratic winds and lightning strikes that could ignite new blazes. Prolonged drought and unusually warm weather have stoked increasingly frequent and extreme wildfire behavior in California and elsewhere across the Western United States in recent years, a pattern scientists say is symptomatic of human-induced climate change.įirefighting crews took advantage of a low-pressure weather system that brought rain to much of the fire zone on Sunday evening and continued to douse the region on Monday, helping to tamp down the blaze, U.S. But the fire erupted amid record-breaking heat in a region where desiccated trees and undergrowth already had created a highly combustible fuel bed. ![]() The cause of the blaze was under investigation. Two smaller wildfires in the same county that scorched just over 2,700 acres combined as of Monday and had chased at least 200 residents from their homes, Cal Fire said. Since erupting on Friday, the fast-moving McKinney Fire has forced some 2,000 residents to flee while destroying homes and critical infrastructure, mostly in Siskiyou County, home to the Klamath National Forest, according to a statement from Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday.Īuthorities have yet to quantify the extent of property losses, but the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said in an update posted on Monday that more than 4,900 homes were threatened by flames.Īlready the largest blaze in California this year, the fire has charred 55,493 acres (22,457 hectares) of drought-stressed timber and remained at 0% containment, Cal Fire reported. This update reflects current debates about California's future as a climate-crisis leader facing massive, annual natural disasters the future of California development and housing and the critically necessary alternatives to traditional energy options.YREKA, Calif., Aug 1 (Reuters) - Two bodies were found inside a burned-out car in the path of a huge northern California forest fire raging near the Oregon border, authorities said on Monday, as crews battling the blaze for a fourth day took advantage of rainfall in the area. This second edition brings the wildfire story up to the year 2020, with information about recent extreme and deadly fire events and the evidence that climate change is swiftly changing the wildfire story in California. In this revised edition, Carle covers the basics of fire ecology looks at the effects of fire on people, wildlife, soil, water, and air discusses fire-fighting organizations and land-management agencies and explains how to prepare for an emergency and what to do when one occurs. What is fire? How are wildfires ignited? How do California's weather and topography influence fire? How did Indigenous people use fire on the land we now call California? David Carle's clearly written, dramatically illustrated first edition of Introduction to Fire in California helped Californians, including the millions who live near naturally flammable wildlands, better understand their own place in the state's landscape. An up-to-date, essential guide to California's long relationship with fire, for the climate-change generation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |