Wildfires still rage in California
Tired firefighters continue to battle 330 fires
LOS ANGELES - California firefighters got a gift of a mild, mostly windless night and a forecast for similar conditions as they attempt to protect thousands of Santa Barbara County homes from a huge wildfire.
It's one of more than 300 fires that are taxing their energy and resources around the state.
"The firefighters are stretched thin, they are exhausted," and some have gone days without sleep, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said as he visited a command post in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County.
That's where nearly 2,700 homes were threatened by a four-day-old fire in the Los Padres National Forest. The blaze has blackened about 34 square kilometres.
Fires have burned more than 1,300 square kilometres of land and destroyed at least 69 homes throughout California in the past two weeks. One firefighter died of a heart attack while digging fire lines.
About 1,400 fires have been contained, but more than 330 still were out of control as of yesterday morning.
The Santa Barbara County fire, now the state's top priority, was less active this weekend because of cooler, moist air, says county spokeswoman Pat Wheatley.
"We've been pleased by some co-operative weather," Wheatley says. "The 'sundowners' that we were afraid could happen did not happen much, so that gave us an opportunity to fight the fire without fighting the winds."
The fire was 28 per cent contained, she says.
Over 2,600 homes are under mandatory evacuation orders and residents of 1,400 others were warned to be ready to flee if the flames gathered speed.
The fire, fuelled by five-metre-high, half-century-old chaparral, still had the potential to roll through a hilly area of ranches, housing tracts and orchards between the town of Goleta and Santa Barbara, keeping firefighters on their toes.
"They're feeling very good about this, but they are not taking this fire lightly at all," Wheatley says.
Nearly 1,200 firefighters were assisted by a DC-10 air tanker and other aircraft dumping water and fire retardant along ridges and in steep canyons.
Investigators think the fire, which began Tuesday, was human-caused.
The U.S. Forest Service has asked for public help in determining who set it and whether it was sparked accidentally or on purpose.
Meanwhile, cooler weather helped crews attacking the two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest, but the fire continued to grow slowly on all flanks Saturday night.
The fire, which had blackened 290 square kilometres, was only five per cent contained with full containment not expected until July 30, but fog that moved in from the sea helped prevent it from advancing on Big Sur's famed restaurants and hotels.
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