Numerous fires were burning in California, including a massive blaze that blew up during the weekend to more than 93 square miles in the Lower Lake area about 100 miles north of San Francisco, according to the Associated Press.
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People at the Moose Lodge, where evacuees came earlier Tuesday to get pillows, apples and piles of French toast, are being advised to evacuate as the fire moves closer. “It’s unpredictable. It built its own weather”, said Cal Fire Capt. Steve Kaufman.
The Lowell Fire in Nevada County is now 85 percent contained at 2,304 acres. Thousands of firefighters battled to contain wildfires that have forced the evacuation of thousands of homes and burned more than 121,000 acres of land.
Fire spokesman Dave Wells says the blaze is only 3 percent contained, but crews made good progress on the fire lines and some evacuated residents were able to return.
In all, 22 wildfires raced throughout California, where four years of historic drought have created favorable conditions for fires. Brown also mobilized the California National Guard to help with disaster response.
Evacuation advisories have been issued to 13,000 people.
One firefighter perished in a California fire and four others were injured in recent days.
For the past hundred years, fire agencies have suppressed fires, both to preserve the timber industry in the 1920s, Collins said, and more recently to preserve homes and cabins that continue to populate California forests.
More than 2,900 firefighters have been deployed to the Rocky Fire to get the fire under control.
Flames from a backfire operation burn through a grove of trees as firefighters try to head off the Rocky Fire on August 3, 2015 near Clearlake, California. Lower temperatures, higher humidity and clouds helped firefighters push containment to 20%, according to the national fire tracking website InciWeb.
Through Monday morning, the Advance Fire had burned 86 acres, the same acreage that had been reported on Friday.
Officials said they couldn’t immediately say whether Ruhl had time to let others know by radio that he was in trouble, or whether flames overtook him too fast to call for help.
Here’s some CBS coverage of the Rocky Fire in which a fire captain says, “Sadly I think when we’re done with this one, we’ll be on to the next one”.
The blaze, dubbed the Rocky Fire, has scorched some 62,000 acres and destroyed more than 50 structures since erupting last week in the canyons and foothills along the inland flanks of California’s North Coast Ranges, quadrupling in size over the weekend.
Or, as Brown said in a statement: “California’s severe drought and extreme weather have turned much of the state into a tinderbox”.
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Berlant said late Monday that the fire ripped through the forests at breakneck speed, with firefighters struggling to keep apace.
