AGI – The fires in California continue to spread: over the weekend, more than 6,000 hectares were destroyed by the flames that attacked an area northwest of Los Angeles. Experts are talking about an alarming season for the west coast of the United States. “This is just a glimpse of what we will have in the future,” said Daniel Swain, a climate change scholar at the University of California. The flames broke out Saturday afternoon near Interstate 5, about eighty kilometers from Los Angeles, forcing more than 1,200 people to leave the Hungry Valley campground, a popular rest area for nature lovers.
Authorities have closed Pyramid Lake, another favorite destination for thousands of vacationers and hikers. The affected area is 60 square kilometers large. In the last few hours the situation has worsened: only two percent of the fire has been put out in what is considered the most serious fire of the season and the first of this size this year. The authorities called him “Post”.
The winds, which blow at eighty kilometers per hour, make the firefighters’ operations even more complicated. Airplanes dumping thousands of liters of water see water resources “scattered everywhere” and not where they should, local authorities told the New York Times. Two buildings – a kiosk and a leisure center – were damaged. At the moment the flames of “Post” have not reached the houses, but people have been asked to be ready to evacuate. According to the firefighters, it could take a long time to bring the situation under control, also because other outbreaks are popping up in nearby areas. A second fire, called “Max”, broke out about eighty kilometers east of “The Post” and has so far burned hundreds of hectares of land near homes in Lancaster, a city of 170 thousand inhabitants.
The authorities asked some residents to leave their homes, but the area was cordoned off. The lack of rain has left hundreds of thousands of acres in California at risk of fire. Every day, experts say, one could explode. And summer, with its high temperatures, is coming.
