Nearly 7,000 hectares of vegetation were destroyed by this fire described as “explosive”. Thousands of people could be evacuated.
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More than 2,500 firefighters fought the flames of a fire on Monday July 25 “explosive” which continued to spread at an ever-increasing rate “very fast” in the forested hills of central California, near famous Yosemite National Park.
The fire, dubbed “Oak Fire”, broke out on Friday near the small town of Midpines and had already covered some 6,800 hectares of vegetation according to the latest report available on Monday morning. Already the biggest California wildfire of the season, “it is moving very quickly and the reaction window to evacuate people is limited”explained on the chain CNN Jon Heggie, a person in charge of the soldiers of the fire californians.
The “Oak Fire” was only contained up to 10% on Monday, after having destroyed a dozen buildings, but the emergency services fear that this toll will increase rapidly. The fire threatens a few thousand homes in small rural towns in Mariposa County, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where several thousand people remained under evacuation orders.
Yosemite Park, one of the most famous in the world, suffered a fire in mid-July, the flames of which threatened its giant sequoias. These trees for some millennia have been generally preserved thanks in particular to controlled fires carried out for decades in these groves to reduce the fuel on the ground.