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California Fire
Seven people were missing Wednesday following an explosion at a fireworks warehouse in rural Northern California that caused a massive fire that spread to farm fields and forced evacuations in the surrounding community, authorities said. Emergency crews and investigators were working with the property's owner and monitoring the area using drones to find the individuals, said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It was not immediately clear if those missing worked at the warehouse or lived nearby. People were urged to avoid the area after the Tuesday night blast, which set off a barrage of fireworks and caused a huge blaze that led to other spot fires and collapsed the building near Esparto in Yolo County about 64 kilometres northwest of Sacramento. The cause of the explosion was under investigation. The fire will take time to cool, and once it does, explosive experts must safely enter the site to assess and secure the area, the Yolo County Sheriff's Office sa
A major fire burning Friday at one of the world's largest battery storage plants in Northern California is sending up flames of toxic smoke, leading to the evacuation of 1,700 people and the closure of a major highway. The blaze in Moss Landing started Thursday. Fire crews were not engaging with the fire but were waiting for it to burn out on its own, The Mercury News reported. The blaze was still burning early Friday and it had not gone beyond the facility, according to Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli. As of late Thursday, a few dozen people were at a temporary evacuation centre and the rest had gone to friends or family or made other arrangements, Pasculli said. The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (125 kilometres) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if the
As if they aren't already facing enough, firefighters in California also could encounter fire tornadoes a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather. The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a particularly dangerous situation in which any new fire could explode in size. The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn't mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they're possible given the extreme conditions. A look at fire tornados: What is a fire tornado? Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don't always agree on what's what. Some say fire whirls are formed only by heat, while fire tornados involve clouds generated by the fire itself. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group's glossary of wildland fire terms doesn't include an entry for fire torna
In an announcement postponed by the Los Angeles wildfires, President Joe Biden on Tuesday designated two sites in California as national monuments that will honour Native American tribes while shielding picturesque mountains and deserts from mining and energy development. Biden made the designations at an event at the White House, a week after -- and on the other side of the country from -- how he'd originally planned to do so, with a speech in California's Eastern Coachella Valley. The president landed in California on January 6 but made it as far as Los Angeles before high winds -- that helped spark the Los Angeles blazes -- forced officials to scrap the event. It was a stark reminder that, even as Biden uses the last days of his administration to attempt to safeguard the environment, climate change is already helping to exacerbate natural disasters. Instead, Biden spoke next to screens featuring towering peaks, desert vistas and an array of plant and animal life. "I was hoping w
Fire crews worked Tuesday to hold on to the progress made against the largest blaze in California this year ahead of warming temperatures forecast for later this week. Authorities said containment was 14 per cent and lifted evacuation orders in some communities of Butte County, where the Park Fire started last week before spreading to a neighbouring county and scorching an area bigger than Los Angeles. The massive fire continues to burn through rugged, inaccessible terrain with dense vegetation, threatening to spread to two other counties. That's going to be a continued challenge for us moving forward over the next couple of days," said Mark Brunton, an operations section chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Park Fire, now the fifth largest in the state's recorded history, was one of more than 100 large active wildfires burning in the US on Tuesday. It has scorched nearly 600 square miles (1,551 square kilometres), according to CAL Fire. For ...
Hurricane Hilary grew rapidly into Category 4 strength off Mexico's Pacific coast on Friday and could reach Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years, which forecasters warned could cause extreme flooding, mudslides and even tornados. Hilary had sustained winds near 145 mph (230 kph) early Friday, and was expected to strengthen a bit more before starting to weaken. Nevertheless, it was forecast to still be a hurricane when approaching Mexico's Baja California peninsula on Saturday night, and a tropical storm when approaching Southern California on Sunday. The National Hurricane Center on Friday issued its first ever tropical storm watch for much of Southern California, covering a wide swath of the region from the coast to the interior mountains and deserts. No tropical storm has made landfall in Southern California since Sept. 25, 1939, according to the National Weather Service. The watch warned of numerous potential threats to life and property including ...