Firefighters battled Thursday to douse a series of wildfires fuelled by high winds, scorching temperatures and dry vegetation that have forced tens of thousands of Californians to flee their homes. A blaze scorching swathes of the Angeles National Forest, in southern California, two huge infernos in the central part of the state and another fire further north have displaced entire towns.
"Our fire activity has definitely picked up in past weeks in number and severity," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Angeles forest fire - dubbed "Bluecut" - has devoured 12,545 hectares (31,000 acres), an area more than twice the size of Bermuda, and is just four percent contained.
The fire has been spreading at such an alarming pace that it appears as if it were "running at you," according to Michael Lopez, a spokesman for fire information website Inciweb. More than 82,500 people potentially in Bluecut's path are under evacuation orders, including the entire populations of Wrightwood and Lytle Creek, towns of a few thousand people, and most of those in nearby Phelan. Many have sought refuge withe family or friends but motels in the area are full. Many businesses have doubled their prices, leading to a warning from the authorities that "price gouging" is against the law.
Colette Martinez, 50, fled with her husband and son to a Red Cross center hastily installed at a school in the town of Hesperia. "We don't know if we'll have a home to go back to," she told AFP, in tears. No deaths have been reported, although two firefighters surrounded by flames on Tuesday sustained minor injuries. Some 1,600 firefighters are committed to Bluecut, while 5,000 are battling the larger Soberanes fire, which has charred 32,000 hectares in the Big Sur tourist region, further north. Four thousand people have fled the Clayton fire, started by an arsonist, according to police, in the northern Clear Lake area, near the wine regions of Sonoma and Napa.
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