(Hemet) A major fire ravaging an area on the outskirts of Los Angeles has doubled in size in less than 24 hours, firefighters announced Thursday, facing a sweltering heat wave in the western United States.
Posted at 4:19 p.m.
Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate the area threatened by the “Fairview fire”, which has now consumed more than 7700 hectares of land.
“The fire is spreading east, south, and in portions north of the fire’s focus,” California wildfire services said.
Two people have already been killed in the fire that broke out on Monday, in the midst of an extreme heat wave that has hit California for a week, as well as parts of Nevada and Arizona. With temperatures flirting with 45 ° C in some places, which jeopardize the Californian electricity grid.
The grid regulator, California ISO, narrowly avoided rotating blackouts (controlled and spread over different areas) on Tuesday. He renewed his alert on Wednesday to “urge consumers to bring demand down” in the evening and ended up praising the public’s cooperation which he says has kept power supply across the state all week.
According to the US weather services, the heat wave should begin to dissipate in the coming days, but California is not out of the woods yet.