As of Monday morning, three blazes burning largely unchecked around the outskirts of Spokane, the state’s second-largest city, had collectively charred about 13,000 acres (5,260 hectares) of dry brush, grass and timber, with zero percent containment, officials said.
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The Chimney Fire near Nacimiento Lake has burned 31,644 acres and is 35 percent contained as of 6 a.m. Monday, according to Cal Fire. While it was the clear inspiration for the home of the fictional Charles Foster Kane, Welles’ character he loosely based on Hearst, the mansion wasn’t completed until six years after the movie debuted.
In the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, a wildfire expanded to almost 37 square miles as it chewed through critically dry brush, grass and oak canopies.
At least 10 homes and numerous outbuildings were leveled on Sunday south of Spokane by the so-called Yale Fire, according to Sevigney.
Residents of mostly rural homes near Lake Nacimiento were ordered to leave late Sunday.
Englund said the fire doesn’t pose much of the threat to the castle building.
Meanwhile, people in the community of Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation have been told to evacuate.
Authorities have lifted all evacuation orders affecting thousands of people, less than a week after a wildfire raged through mountainous terrain in Southern California and consumed hundreds of homes and other buildings.
Bureau of Land Management spokesman Larry Moore says the wildfire is burning two miles east of the Owyhee Reservoir, and it’s threatening Succor Creek State Park.
There are 3,785 firefighting personnel battling the blaze.
At Lower Lake, 80 miles north of San Francisco, recovery efforts remained underway in the aftermath of hard-hit Lake County’s latest wildfire, which destroyed 189 homes since erupting August 13. It’s between West Yellowstone, Montana, a town just outside the park’s western boundary, and Madison Junction within the park.
In neighboring Yellowstone, a fire burning near the West Entrance Road grew bigger Monday and a new team of fire managers was being brought in to help, although the fire was not being actively suppressed yet. The town also lost power, making the battle by firefighters more hard. The fire, whose cause in under investigation, burned about 15,000 acres in very high winds.
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The historic Hearst Castle, built in the early 20th century for publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, is no longer in immediate danger but the so-called Chimney Fire crept within five kilometres of the castle over the weekend before shifting direction, authorities said.
