Top stories begin quote from:Wildfire near Yosemite forces thousands to flee |
Wildfire near Yosemite forces thousands to flee homes
Story highlights
- Detwiler Fire in California's Mariposa County has burned more than 45,000 acres since Sunday
- Gov. Jerry Brown has declared an emergency for the county
(CNN)Kim Strauss didn't see the wildfire consume his California residence, but he says he'd be surprised if the home was still there.
Strauss
is one of a few thousand people who were told to leave their homes
because of a wildfire raging in California's Mariposa County, to the
west of Yosemite National Park. He saw the flames approaching from a
ridge near his house southwest of Mariposa city on Tuesday morning.
A sheriff's officer told him and his girlfriend that they had 10 minutes to leave.
"I
got my clothes and I grabbed my girlfriend's dresser and her pictures
and her stuff, and I grabbed my mom's stuff, and the dogs" and put
everything in a pickup truck, he told CNN affiliate KRON. "It's our first home, and I worked hard on it."
The
Detwiler Fire, which started Sunday near Lake McClure, has burned more
than 45,000 acres and was 7% contained Wednesday morning, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
Kim Strauss
About
4,000 people have been evacuated, including the entire city of Mariposa
a few miles west of the park, and eight structures have been destroyed,
officials said. The park itself has issued no warning for visitors, but
the fire is threatening power lines that supply Yosemite, state fire
officials said. Gov. Jerry Brown declared an emergency for the county.
Here's what the fire has looked like, in images shared by people at the scene:
Help from 200 miles away
More than 2,200 firefighters
are fighting the blaze, including a crew from the Southern California
city of Lompoc, some 200 miles away.
The
Lompoc firefighters posted videos and pictures to Instagram on Tuesday.
It was their 12th straight day on the road, and they had helped fight
two other wildfires before the Detwiler fire.
'Grabbed most of my clothes'
Stephanie
Warner, a guide at Yosemite, has been living in Mariposa only for a
month. She and her housemates were among those evacuated from the city
of about 2,000 people Tuesday.
She posted to Instagram a picture of what she wrote was the "super creepy" sky around the time she was packing.
"(I) grabbed most of my clothes, laptop, electronics, important documents," among other things, she told CNN.
A
police officer told her and her housemates to leave around 4 p.m. PT,
roughly three hours after power went out. She said Wednesday that she
was staying in Fresno, wondering if the house in Mariposa will survive.
Home safe for now
George
Bell-Uribe said it appeared that fire wasn't threatening his
Mariposa-area home Wednesday morning. He said the flames appeared to
have been stopped about a mile from his residence, and he praised
firefighters' work.
Video that he
posted Wednesday to Instagram showed a generally hazy area, and, as the
camera panned to the right, smoke rising from hills in the distance.
View from a hospital
Jen Wright took this video from her workplace, John C. Fremont Hospital near Mariposa, on Tuesday:
The Detwiler Fire, named for
one of the roads in the area, is one of 17 large wildfires burning in
California on Wednesday, officials said. The cause of the Detwiler blaze
wasn't immediately known, but hot, dry conditions conducive to such
fires have persisted for days.
The National Weather Service warned that northeastern California's Modoc County was at high risk of new wildfires Wednesday afternoon because of gusty winds and low humidity.
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