LOS ANGELES - Firefighters battled on
Saturday to outflank a wildfire that has forced the closure of
an interstate highway in Northern California as the blaze swept
through explosively dry mountain timber in the Shasta-Trinity
National Forest for a fourth day.
The Delta Fire has scorched more than 31,000 acres (12,545
hectares) in the Cascade range since erupting on Wednesday in a
forest canyon along the Sacramento River, about 250 miles (402
km) north of San Francisco, fire officials said.
Although containment of the blaze, a measure of the progress
made in carving buffers around the fire's perimeter to halt its
spread, remained at zero crews have made gains clearing away
tinder-dry brush beyond its leading edge.
The fire has spread quickly through drought-stricken pine
forests thick with dead and dying timber which has been ravaged
by bark beetle infestations.
The underbrush is being removed with a combination of
bulldozers and hand tools, as well as controlled burning
operations, Captain Brandon Vaccaro, a spokesman for the Delta
fire incident command, said.
"We're actually getting a lot of work done and making a lot
of good progress, but that progress is not at the edge of the
fire," Vaccaro told Reuters by telephone. "We're removing the
fuel from in front of the fire."
Much of the effort has also focused on protecting scattered
homes and small communities in the sparsely populated fire zone,
but an unspecified number of homes have been destroyed, he said.
Vaccaro said about 300 people were under mandatory
evacuation orders in Shasta and Trinity counties. Farther north,
an evacuation warning was in effect for the town of Dunsmuir,
advising some 1,600 residents to be ready to flee at a moment's
notice.
The blaze also has caused major travel disruptions in the
region. On Wednesday, flames raced across Interstate 5, chasing
a number of truckers from their vehicles before flames engulfed
their abandoned rigs, though no serious injuries were reported.
A 45-mile (72-km) stretch of the I-5, a key north-south
route through the entire state, has remained closed since then,
requiring traffic detours of up to 120 miles (193 km), officials
said.
Shasta County communities are still recovering from a
devastating blaze this summer that killed eight people and
incinerated hundreds of dwellings in and around Redding.
California's wildfire threat could intensify next week with
forecasts of a statewide heatwave.