A violent fire that has ravaged the Californian forest since Friday continued to spread on Sunday, causing the evacuation of thousands of people, in the context of strong heat peaks affecting tens of millions of Americans throughout the country.
The fire, dubbed “Oak Fire,” is spreading across Mariposa County, near Yosemite National Park and its famous giant sequoias.
It “has expanded significantly in the northern portion, moving further into the Sierra National Forest,” according to a Sunday bulletin from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Favored by “extreme drought”, winds and rising temperatures, the fire, fought by some 2,000 firefighters, burned at least 5,500 hectares of forest, destroyed 10 properties, damaged five others and threatened more than 2,500, told AFP a spokeswoman for this department.
” Scary “
More than 6,000 people, mostly living in small high-altitude communities, had to evacuate on Saturday, according to another California fire department spokesperson, quoted by the Los Angeles Times newspaper.
“It was scary when we left, because we were getting ashes on us, and we had such a vision of this cloud (of smoke). It looked like he was over our house and coming towards us very quickly,” Lynda Reynolds-Brown, a woman who had to leave her home, told local channel KCRA 3.
“We were starting to gather our things. I went back up the hill to look and I thought ‘Oh my God’ it (the fire) was coming fast,” added her husband, Aubrey Brown, near a Mariposa school-turned-welfare center. ’emergency.
Yosemite Park, one of the most famous in the world, had experienced a fire in mid-July, the flames of which threatened its giant sequoias.
The American West has already experienced forest fires of exceptional magnitude and intensity in recent years, with a very marked lengthening of the fire season, a phenomenon that scientists attribute to climate change.
100° Fahrenheit
“Oak Fire” is one of the most dramatic manifestations of the heat wave affecting the United States this weekend, in the northwest, center and northeast. A map from the National Weather Service (NWS) shows a very large part of the country, including California, all of the south, then a large part of the east coast, affected by temperatures between 37 and 43 degrees.
“It will be extremely oppressive, especially in major metropolitan areas from Washington to New York and Boston,” the NWS wrote on Twitter, adding that in the south temperatures above the symbolic mark of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (more than 37 ° C) will continue until at least Thursday.
“Scientists have been predicting these extraordinary and catastrophic events for decades now,” former US Vice President Al Gore, who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his commitment to the climate.
“Today they say that if we don’t stop using our atmosphere as a garbage can, and if we don’t stop these heat-trapping (greenhouse gas) emissions, things are going to get worse. More people will be killed and the survival of our civilization is at stake,” he added.