California wildfire spreads, thousands evacuated

CALIFORNIA: A fast-moving wildfire driven by strong wind and high temperatures tore through homes north of Los Angeles late on Friday, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate.

The blaze, one of dozens across the region, broke out in a building in Goleta, California at about 8:30 p.m.

It spread to vegetation before burning up to 20 other buildings, fire officials said.

Video footage showed firefighters battling fires at several homes, as Santa Barbara County authorities said at least 2,200 residents were evacuated and 2,000 were without power, according to a Twitter posting.

Dozens of fires have broken out across the western United States, fanned by scorching heat, winds and low humidity.

The first death attributed to them was announced on Friday, when the remains of an unidentified person were found in a home burned to the ground by the Klamathon fire, which broke out Thursday near California´s border with Oregon.

This year´s fires had burned more than 2.9 million acres through Thursday, compared with an annual average of about 2.4 million over the last 10 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

A dangerous heat wave will continue to bake Southern California on Saturday, hitting temperatures well above 110 degrees across the region and setting all-time records in several places.

High temperatures will exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius) in Los Angeles and San Diego on Saturday, the National Weather Service said in a series of excessive heat warnings and advisories.

“An excessive heat warning means an extended period of dangerously hot temperatures will occur with increased occurrences of heat illnesses likely,” the service said.

It was 111 degrees at one point on Friday at the University of California Los Angeles, breaking the all-time high temperature record of 109 degrees set in 1939, the weather service reported on Twitter. That was still 6 degrees cooler than the record 117 degrees set in Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles neighborhood, at about 1 p.m.local time on Friday, the service said.

Cooling centers will be open across the Los Angeles area and other California communities.

Los Angeles officials told residents they should also visit libraries, recreation centers, senior centers and museums to stay cool. The western US was in the midst of a record heat wave Friday, with one dead in California as massive fires forced hundreds to evacuate.

“Large fire activity is spread across the country from Florida to Alaska,” the National Interagency Fire Center announced, as temperatures spiked above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in some places.

“Currently 60 large fires have burned more than 823,000 acres in 13 states,” the center added. Twenty fires burned in Alaska, with seven others in New Mexico, four in California, eight in Colorado and others in Nevada, Arizona, and elsewhere in the southern US.

California´s fire agency, Cal Fire, said on Twitter that one person had died as a result of the “Klamathon” fire in Siskiyou County, near the border with Oregon.

Mandatory evacuations were in place, including in the Napa Valley wine region and in southern California near San Diego, where state Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Friday night due to the “West Fire.” That fire has already destroyed homes and forced road closures, the governor´s statement said.

Authorities´ efforts to tackle the fires have been complicated by record-breaking hot weather, with temperatures reaching 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Palm Springs — two hours east of Los Angeles — and 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix, Arizona.