[ad_1]
A fiery storm badped Thursday residents of Redding and other small communities on its way, fleeing their lives, leaving at least 500 homes and other structures destroyed. An officer of the state of fire estimated that the account could be several hundred higher.
The huge fire – already one of the first 20 in the history of California – claimed at least five lives: Redding fire inspector Jeremy Stoke; Don Ray Smith, age 81, operating a civilian bulldozer; and Melody Bledsoe, 70, and two great-grandchildren,
James Roberts,
5, and Emily Roberts, 4. The bodies of the family were found in their home in Redding which was destroyed by a fire last Thursday night, when the two men also died.
Bledsoe's husband, Ed Bledsoe, said his wife called him in a panic Thursday when he was out. "She said you have to go home now, the fire is right next to the house," Bledsoe said in an interview with Capital Public Radio. Mr. Bledsoe said that he arrived too late. The three were missing until their bodies were found on Saturday.
During the weekend, Carr's fire remained active but grew mainly in rural areas south and north of Redding, a town 200 miles north of San Francisco. But a large part of Redding, with its 92,000 inhabitants, remained in a state of evacuation while firefighters warned that the flames, fed by gusts of wind and three-digit incessant heat, could at any time back
. "It's a pretty hopeless feeling," said Easton Waterman, a 19-year-old student who helped his family pack photographs and other valuable badets in a vehicle in case they should leave. "Nobody knows what the fire will do, because it's big and unpredictable."
Saturday, President
Donald Trump
sign an emergency declaration request by Gov. Jerry Brown for federal badistance in firefighting efforts in the Redding area.
A few hundred miles south, the 52,000-acre Ferguson Fire that erupted on July 13 outside Yosemite National Park in a forest filled with millions of trees killed during the California's last five-year drought, the worst ever recorded. But firefighters have made considerable progress in encircling the containment lines, and authorities have begun to lift certain evacuation restrictions.
However, officials at the National Park Service have extended a planned closure on July 25 for the Yosemite Valley. . Although the valley is not directly threatened, they said the closure was necessary because of the smoke from the fire and that the firefighters had more room to work.
The infernals were only two of the 14 big fires in the state of gold, where a fire season that began in the late summer is prolonged for a good part of the year. of the year due to drought, warmer temperatures and the accumulation of dead trees and other fuels, said Scott McLean. Forestry and Fire Protection or Cal Fire
. McLean said the vegetation remains dry even after heavy rains and snow two years ago, which, he adds, has compounded the threat of fire by adding more fuel. "What we need," he said Saturday, "it's many years of heavy winter precipitation."
Jim Carlton at [email protected]
Source link
