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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 statewide.
The frontline of the fire crisis is the 61,200-acre Basin Complex fire, which is besieging the picturesque tourist resort of Big Sur, some 193 kilometres south of San Francisco.
A spokeswoman for the Monterey County Office of Emergency Services said the fire was only three percent contained and was spreading in all directions, threatening 1,377 residences. Seventeen homes had already been destroyed.
Fire crews were being hampered in their attempts to quell the flames by the rugged terrain of the region. "The topography and the weather isn't helping," the Monterey County spokeswoman told AFP.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of about 200 homes in the fire-threatened coastal resort, and a 48-kilometre 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 2,200 dollars 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 one billion dollars in damage. - AFP/de
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