California, Washington Wildfires Destroy Structures and Force Evacuations

By Eric Zerkel
Published: September 14,2014



 
Firefighters struggled to deal with four wildfires that threatened and destroyed, homes in California and Washington.
A new blaze broke out in Madera County near Oakhurst in Central California on Sunday afternoon, prompting authorities to evacuate over 1,000 people. Over 400 structures are threatened by the blaze and at least ten have been destroyed, according to the Madera County Sheriff's Office Facebook page.
The blaze sparked shortly after 1:30 p.m. near Bass Lake, Madera County Sheriff's spokeswoman Erika Stuart said.
The fire started off a country road between Oakhurst, a foothill community south of the entrance to Yosemite National Park, and Bass Lake and quickly grew to at least 320 acres, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant said.
The area is a popular destination throughout the year.
"We have a lot of full-time residents as well as renters and people with vacation homes here," Stuart said.
On Saturday, a wildfire in Northern California Saturday afternoon quickly spread across more than 250 acres of dry terrain, destroying two homes and at least four other structures in the process.
Police issued mandatory evacuations for residents of the area, located in Nevada County just to the east of Alta Sierra, California, but those evacuations were lifted at around 10 p.m. local time.
"I just saw saw those flames across the street and I started crying," evacuated resident Morgan Atkins told KCRA. "I was shaking and praying for everybody to be ok."  
As of Saturday evening, firefighters upped containment on the so-called Dog Bar Fire to 20 percent, CalFire reports.
Hundreds of miles to the south, in California's Cleveland National Forest, a much larger inferno continued grew to 1,600 acres in Orange County's Silverado Canyon. Some 250 structures are threatened by the blaze, and an evacuation order remains in place for around 217 homes.
More than 100 homes are also without power due to the fire. That number is down from more than 400 at the peak of power outages Friday, the Orange County Register notes.
The Silverado Fire started in the backyard of a home in rural Silverado Canyon around 11 a.m. on Friday and quickly tore through the area’s drought-parched vegetation. It took just hours for the fire to grow, with temperatures reaching into the upper 90's and wind gusts of 10 to 20 mph pushing embers into dry vegetation, igniting additional flames.
According to weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam, firefighting conditions aren't likely to improve throughout the weekend, as it will remain hot and dry throughout the area.
That's bad news for the more than 1000 firefighters were attempting to tackle the fire on the ground. Firefighters have struggled to fight the fire in steep, hilly terrain and high temperatures. Six firefighters have already suffered minor injuries battling the blaze, the Associated Press reports.
At least 10 helicopters and five air tankers were also assisting in trying to gain control of the blaze. As of Sunday morning, the fire was only 20 percent contained, according to the Orange County Register.
Meanwhile, in Washington, a dozen homes were under threat from a wildfire that grew to more than 1,500 acres. Not much information has been released by fire authorities about the so-called Trindad Fire, but no evacuations have yet to be issued.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.