Wildfire along California’s Big Sur forces evacuations
World | January 23, 2022 8:06 ISTThe fire started on Friday night in a steep canyon and quickly spread toward the sea, fanned by strong winds up to 50 mph (80 kph).
The fire started on Friday night in a steep canyon and quickly spread toward the sea, fanned by strong winds up to 50 mph (80 kph).
As coronavirus pandemic raged on for the second year, a number of countries around the world battled a wave of extreme weather events from wildfire in California to floods in Australia.
The hazard trees could potentially fall onto people and cars on section of State Route 180 known as Generals Highway, or they could create barriers for emergency and fire response, the Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks said on Friday.
SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant has rapidly replaced the Alpha variant around the world. According to epidemiological studies, the Delta variant, first identified in India in late 2020, is at least 40 per cent more transmissible than the Alpha variant, first identified in the UK, last year.
The currently most active fire in California cut a 64.3 km stretch of the Highway 50 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains area, said the Inciweb, an interstate incident information system, in an update on Sunday.
The Caldor Fire in the northern Sierra Nevada already destroyed dozens of homes, and authorities on Friday closed down a 46-mile (74-km) stretch of Interstate 50, the main route between the state capital of Sacramento and Lake Tahoe on the Nevada state line.
California has already surpassed the acreage burned at this point last year, which ended up setting the record. Now it’s entering a period when powerful winds have often driven the deadliest blazes.
The U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that beginning on Aug. 22 it will close nine national forests from near Lake Tahoe at the Nevada border on the east all the way west to Six Rivers National Forest, which stretches north to the Oregon border and contains more than 1 million acres of land alone.
California has already surpassed the acreage burned at this point last year, which ended up setting the record.
The cloud stretched over much of the city on Sunday afternoon, covering the skies overhead with a black and orange blanket of smoke.
Experts have linked wildfires to record-high temperatures as Europe is in the midst of the heatwave due to the heat dome which is a high-pressure bubble that traps heat within a certain area.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers were “martyrs” who saved 100 people from the fires in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the North African nation’s Berber population.
The Dixie Fire that incinerated much of the gold rush-era town of Greenville has destroyed more than 180 homes and is threatening more than 10,000 buildings in the northern Sierra Nevada. It had engulfed an area larger than the size of New York City.
Wildfires continued to cause devastation in Turkey as the President declared the affected regions "disaster areas."
California's largest wildfire merged with a smaller blaze and destroyed homes in remote areas with limited access for firefighters, as numerous other fires gained strength and threatened property across the U.S. West.
The Dixie fire, which started July 14, had already leveled over a dozen houses and other structures when it tore through the tiny community of Indian Falls after dark.
A new study has found that wildfire smoke may greatly increase susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
On Friday, Death Valley National Park in California recorded a staggering high of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54 Celsius) and could reach the same high on Saturday.
Mount Shasta, the volcano that towers over the region, was shrouded in a haze from smoke plumes that could be seen in images from weather satellites in space.
The burn care centre has been partnering with community groups to urge people around swimming pools to wear flip-flops and distributing them to vulnerable populations to try to prevent foot burns.
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