AP – Officials in a Northern California community in the United States (US) cancelled an annual Fourth of July fireworks celebration as an estimated 26,000 residents remained displaced by a growing wildfire, while hundreds of firefighters toiled under extreme heat to keep flames from reaching more homes.
The Thompson Fire broke out before noon on Tuesday about 110 kilometres (km) north of Sacramento, near the city of Oroville in Butte County. It sent up a huge plume of smoke that could be seen from space as it grew to more than 14 square kilometres.
Oroville Mayor David Pittman said there was a “significant drop in the fire activity” on Wednesday, and he was hopeful that some residents could soon be allowed to return home.
The fire’s progress was stopped along the southern edge, and firefighters working in steep terrain were trying to build containment lines on the northern side. By Wednesday evening, containment stood at seven per cent.
“On that north side they have some real struggles in terms of the topography,” Pittman said. More than a dozen other blazes, most of them small, were active across the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
A new fire on Wednesday afternoon prompted brief evacuations in heavily populated Simi Valley, about 65km northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The state’s largest blaze, the Basin Fire, covered nearly 57 square km of the Sierra National Forest in eastern Fresno County and was 26 per cent contained.
