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Wildfires blaze across California, tourist haven besieged
SAN FRANCISCO: Raging wildfires roared towards a popular tourist resort town in northern California on Thursday, threatening homes and forcing luxury hotels to evacuate, officials said.
Nearly 1,800 fires have erupted across California since June 20, with flames sweeping through more than 204,000 hectares of tinder-dry parkland left at the mercy of fires after months of low rainfalls.
The California governor's Office of Emergency Services said although 1,414 of the fires were now contained, there remained 28 fire 'clusters' that continued to threaten life and some 11,316 properties.
"Those are very much the focus of our concern," spokesman Greg Rennick said, adding that 20,254 personnel had been deployed to tackle the fires state-wide.
The frontline of the fire crisis is the 64,305-acre Basin Complex fire, which is besieging the picturesque tourist resort of Big Sur, some 193 kilometers south of San Francisco.
A spokeswoman for the Monterey County Office of Emergency Services said the fire was only three per cent contained and was spreading in all directions, threatening 1,377 residences. A total of 19 homes had already been destroyed.
Fire crews were being hampered in their attempts to quell the flames by the rugged terrain of the region and powerful winds fanning the flames from the Pacific Ocean. "The topography and the weather aren’t helping," the Monterey County spokeswoman told AFP.
A spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the offshore winds were providing weary fire-fighters with especially challenging conditions.
"The winds are making the fire behave unusually, and that's a major control issue," she said, warning that forecast warm temperatures and low humidity meant fire crews could expect no relief from Mother Nature.
US Forest Service incident commander Mike Dietrich said the combination of weather and bone-dry vegetation was a "perfect storm."
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of about 200 homes in Big Sur, and a 48-kilometer stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway remained closed.
The fires had come at the height of the tourist season in Big Sur, and many hotels and restaurants were reported to be deserted.
"It's kind of eerie when it's this quiet," Janet Lesniak, owner of the River Inn, told the Monterey Herald newspaper.
At the exclusive Post Ranch Inn resort - where rooms cost up to US$2,200 a night - guests and staff had been evacuated, according to a message on the hotel's main switchboard.
"For the safety of our guests and our employees we have voluntarily evacuated the property," the message said.
California is frequently hit by scorching wildfires due to its dry climate, Santa Ana winds and recent housing booms which have seen housing spread rapidly into rural and densely forested areas.
In October, devastating wildfires were among the worst in California history, leaving eight people dead, destroying 2,000 homes, displacing 640,000 people and causing US$1 billion in damage.
- AFP/yb
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