REDDING - California firefighters
were gaining ground on Monday on a massive wildfire that has
killed six people and destroyed hundreds of homes and
businesses, while rescuers searched for at least seven people
who were unaccounted for.
The Carr Fire ignited a week ago outside Redding,
California, and doubled in size over the weekend, charring an
area the size of Denver and forcing 38,000 people to flee their
homes. Two firefighters and a woman, Melody Bledsoe, and her two
young great-grandchildren are among the dead.
"I would've liked to have went in there and died with them,"
Ed Bledsoe, Melody Bledsoe's widower, said in a tearful
interview with CNN aired on Monday in which he described his
final phone call with his family as the flames closed in.
Centered 150 miles (240 km) north of Sacramento, the Carr
Fire is the deadliest of the 90 wildfires burning across the
United States. Collectively, wildfires have blackened 4.4
million acres (1.8 million hectares) of land so far this year,
21 percent more than the 10-year average for the time period,
according to federal data.
The more than 3,000 firefighters battling the Carr Fire
began to gain control of it on Sunday, cutting containment lines
around 20 percent of its perimeter by Monday morning, according
to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
(Cal Fire). For much of the weekend the fire was just 5 percent
contained.
Firefighters were struggling to control the fire's western
flank, where terrain is steep and the air thick with smoke, fire
officials said.
"That's where we need to fly," Dominic Polito, of the
Escondido Fire Department, said in a telephone interview. "We
can still use helicopters, but we can't use the fixed-wing
aircraft."
Gale-force winds that drove the fire late last week have
eased to moderate speeds, but temperatures are again expected to
top 100 Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), according to the National
Weather Service.
The fire grew rapidly beginning on Thursday, confounding
fire officials with the speed of its movement.
Nearly 1,000 buildings have been destroyed by the
99,000-acre (155 square mile) blaze, Cal Fire said. The fire
leveled the town of Keswick, home to 450 people. It
also sparked an effort to rescue people's horses and livestock
in the rugged region, a popular fishing destination.
Some 260 National Guard troops and 100 police officers were
stationed in evacuated neighborhoods to guard against looting.
Another California fire prompted a rare closure of much of
Yosemite National Park last week, while a third forced mass
evacuations from the mountain resort community of Idyllwild,
east of Los Angeles.