The ongoing fires in northern California claimed a fourth casualty on Wednesday as firefighters attempted to stabilize the blaze devastating the prestigious Napa Valley wine region where many areas were hit hard.
At least a dozen wineries, often upscale, were victims of the flames of the "Glass Fire", which broke out on Sunday and was only 2% contained on Wednesday after having already covered some 20,000 hectares of vegetation.
Thick smoke hung over the valley and a series of blackened buildings, some reduced to ruins, like the installations of the Castello di Amorosa estate.
“We keep our spirits up.
We have gone through difficult times recently with the coronavirus and other fires, ”
says Madeleine Reid, one of the managers of the estate, surrounded by the still smoking remains of this copy of a medieval Italian castle, whose stones had been specially imported from Europe.
"We only hope that all will be well for our neighbors"
, adds the young woman.
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Tens of thousands of residents have been evacuated in recent days due to the blaze, which is also affecting the nearby Sonoma Valley.
Calistoga, a small town famous for its wine tourism, was deserted on Wednesday, almost cut off from the world by flames.
“It's not great,”
says its mayor, Chris Canning.
“Maybe the bright side is that the fire is not inside the city, but around us.”
In total, the "Glass Fire" destroyed more than 80 homes, a still unknown number of commercial places, and threatens more than 20,000 other buildings, according to the firefighters of California.
Some 2,000 firefighters are deployed on the ground, where the weather forecast raises fears of a return of the dry winds that fanned the flames last weekend.
California is suffering from forest fires of exceptional magnitude this year, with nearly 16,000 km2 gone up in smoke since the start of the season.
About 300 kilometers north of Napa Valley, another fire, dubbed "Zogg Fire", claimed a fourth victim: a man, evacuated by helicopter on Sunday, at the very beginning of the disaster, and who succumbed to his burns, indicated Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini.
A total of thirty people have been killed by the fires in California since the start of the season.
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The cause of the two fires, fueled by strong and very dry winds that blew through the region last weekend, remains undetermined but local authorities - and scientists in general - point to the role of climate change, which is exacerbating a chronic drought and causes extreme weather conditions in the western United States.
President Donald Trump has once again blamed poor forest management, including the presence of dead trees on the ground.
"Every year, people call me to tell me:
'California is burning, California is burning', but
'if it was cleaned up, if there was forest management, we would not have these kinds of calls. "
said Donald Trump on Tuesday night in a televised debate that opposed to his opponent in the presidential election.
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