BERKELEY – Hundreds of homes in the scenic community of Big Sur were threatened by a wildfire that has burned 16 residences and was 3 percent contained yesterday.
About 700 wildfires, many sparked by a severe electrical storm over the weekend, burned across much of Northern and Central California, a point driven home for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he traveled to burn areas to assess the damage.
“I just took off with the plane down from Los Angeles and, from Los Angeles all the way up here, there was smoke, so you can see there is fire everywhere,” Schwarzenegger said at a news conference in Monterey County.
Firefighters scrambled to tame the lightning-sparked wildfire in the Los Padres National Forest that has burned nearly 30 square miles near the coast south of Big Sur.
“This fire is in an area that is going to be very difficult to stop, and expectations are there won't be any stopping this fire any time soon,” said Mark Savage, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
The state's largest fire was about 20 miles east in a more remote area of the Los Padres forest. It also vexed firefighters, having scorched more than 92 square miles and destroyed two homes. The blaze, sparked by a campfire June 8, was about 71 percent contained.
Monterey sheriff's officials said mandatory evacuation orders were in place for both fires, but could not specify how many people were forced from their homes. The Monterey County fires have cost $33 million to fight so far.
Schwarzenegger yesterday also stopped in Butte County, north of Sacramento, where 27 lightning-sparked fires covering about 8 square miles were threatening 1,000 homes. The blazes, which were 5 percent contained, cropped up just as the county was recovering from a fire that charred 74 homes and 36 square miles earlier this month. Schwarzenegger announced he allotted $20 million in emergency funds to help Butte County fight the fires.
Smoke from the fires has caused health officials to issue alerts in the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Central valleys and in the Reno-Tahoe area.
Elsewhere, several blazes also were burning in New Mexico, where a fire in thick trees in the Manzano Mountains prompted officials yesterday to urge hundreds of people to leave their homes in and near Tajique, about 30 miles southeast of Albuquerque.
About four dozen homes in the area burned in a wildfire last month.
