The reason for the fire is a smoke machine that was activated at a family event to expose the sex of the newborn. • 7,000 dunams went up in flames.
The fire in the Sierra Forest
Photo:
IPI
A huge fire broke out Saturday at El Dorado Farm in California.
It consumed 7,000 acres and led to the evacuation of 3,000 people.
It started because of a smoke machine that was turned on at a family party to expose the sex of the newborn, firefighters in the area said.
This is a park that is 115 miles from Los Angeles.
The announcement said that by Sunday evening the fire that started the incident had already consumed 7,050 acres and the control of the flames was very low at the time, with firefighters controlling only five percent of the huge burning area.
The fire is part of a wave of fires that is now hitting all over California, which was reported in "Israel Today" about two weeks ago.
In some places the fire started with powerful lightning storms that ignited the dry vegetation and caused huge flames.
Photo: Reuters
A similar fire caused fire services to cement on Saturday about 1,000 hikers in the Sierra Dino Forest Reserve in San Bernardino, 200 of whom were rescued using military Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, where they camped and were caught in flames with no ground rescue capability.
The rescue operation began Saturday night and continued into Sunday led by the state National Guard.
The photo released by the rescue authorities shows more than twenty rescuers, standing or sitting in a helicopter with their personal belongings.
Dozens of evacuees were evacuated to safety on a Cal Guard Chinook last night after the Creek Fire in central California left them stranded.
Photo courtesy California National Guard.
pic.twitter.com/mi7X6wchpN
- The California National Guard (@CalGuard) September 6, 2020
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gwyn Niosem has declared large parts of California as areas in a state of emergency.
Areas include San Diego, San Bernardino and other cities.
According to reports, the latest wave of fires has already consumed tens of thousands of acres and residential buildings and authorities are constantly engaged in evacuating and rescuing people.
Another fire, known as the "stream fire", set fire to 45,000 dunams, as well as many houses and buildings - despite huge efforts by 800 firefighters to put it out.
Other huge fires started in parallel in the San Diego area and forced many residents to evacuate.
Record-breaking heat waves
One of the reasons for the huge fires and firefighters' difficulty is the historic heat records recorded in California.
A temperature of 49 degrees Celsius was recorded in the San Fernando Valley, and is the highest ever recorded in the Los Angeles County.
Downtown Los Angeles recorded a temperature of 44 degrees and in San Francisco a record temperature of 38 degrees was measured, a real record that surpassed the previous record by five degrees.
This unusual heat also matched the peak temperatures recorded in the Death Valley in the area.
Local forecasters have reported following the situation that over 99% of California residents are in areas with very high temperatures or one that makes it difficult to function outdoors.
As a result, there is a real fear of the fall of the electricity grid in the country and the public is called upon to reduce the use of unnecessary appliances.
Bottom line, the state fire department said 14,800 firefighters had battled 23 life-threatening huge fires, in practice 900 fires have been identified since August 15th.
Eight people died in the fires, about 1.5 million dunams were completely burned and 3,300 buildings caught fire.