A bonfire in El Dorado County, California, has grown to more than 82,000 acres burned since Saturday morning, forcing the continued closure of a road between Lake Tahoe and Sacramento. Authorities in the area are worried that winds of up to 40 mph forecast for Saturday will cause flames from the Heat Fire, according to a CBS Sacramento report.
So far, the Caldor fire has destroyed 245 homes and threatened 15,000 other structures. Cal Fire said Saturday that the fire, which started a week ago, is contained at zero percent.
The 46-mile stretch of Interstate 50 closed on Friday remained closed over the weekend as the fire grew, CBS Sacramento reported.
“Given the forecast we have for the weekend with gusts of wind of 25 to 35 miles per hour, we have no idea what it will do with the fire,” Caltrans spokesman Steve Nelson said.
Officials feared the winds would drive the fire into traffic.
“We started getting rubbish on the freeway, which made it dangerous for cars to pass. We’re going to invest everything we can to keep the fire south in the 50’s,” said Eric Schwarts, head of Cal’s operations section. Fire.
The Caldor Fire is one of 13 fires being burned in the state, including the Dixie Fire mammoth, which had burned more than 714,219 acres on Saturday morning and has only 35% content. He Dixie Fire, the second-largest country in state history, destroyed more than 1,200 homes and forced evictions in Plumas County on Friday. Two years of drought have helped the fires spread through dry grass, bush and forest, the Associated Press reported.
New satellite photos released Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show smoke spreading across the state and into the Pacific Northwest.
California is not the only state struggling to cope with wildfires. Ninety-six major fires in a dozen states have burned a total of 2,427,574 acres, according to data released Saturday by the National Interagency Fire Center (nearly 3,800 square miles).
According to the Associated Press, firefighters are being burned by intense fires across the region in an almost year-round season. Fire patterns used to migrate in seasons from the southwest to the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and then to California, allowing fire crews to move from one place to another, he told AP Anthony Scardina, Deputy Regional Forest Service of the United States Forest Service.
“But the problem is that all of these seasons are starting to overlap,” Scardina said.