Hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate from a fast-moving wildfire burning through steep terrain near California’s central coast on Saturday.
The Alamo Fire nearly tripled in size on Saturday to about 19,000 acres on the border between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. Meanwhile, the sate of emergency has been declared in British Columbia, Canada.
The heat wave in the West isn’t only killing cows but also triggers severe forest fires. More than 1,000 firefighters have been fighting the blaze that started on Thursday and was 10-percent contained as of Saturday afternoon.
The Alamo Fire nearly tripled in size on Saturday to about 19,000 acres on the border between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
No major injuries have been reported in California’s Alamo fire. Authorities are working to evacuate people from the blaze, aiming to stop it from reaching wineries to the south and electric transmission lines to the southeast.
Record heat wave in California
Temperatures in the Southern Californian resort city of Palm Springs climbed to 122 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday, breaking a record high for that date set in 1976. The all-time recorded high was 123 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wildfires burn across the western US and Canada
Heavy rainfall in parts of the West over the winter and spring helped delay the onset of the fire season, but also spurred the growth of dense vegetation that has dried out and become highly combustible in summertime heat.
There were 40 uncontained large U.S. wildfires on Saturday, the National Weather Service said.
One of the largest was the Truckee Fire in Nevada, which was nearly 100,000 acres in size, according to the InciWeb tracking service. There have been no immediate reports of fire-related deaths.
Wildfires have also spread rapidly in Canada this week.
The province of British Columbia declared its first state of emergency in 14 years late on Friday as dozens of wildfires spread throughout the rural interior of the Pacific province, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes.
A summer inferno is raging across the western US and Canada…