by Frankie Taggart
Agence France-Presse
LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — Senior members of the Trump administration were due in California Monday as blazes that have killed at least eight people continued to cut a catastrophic swathe through the country’s most populous state.
Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes over the last month, with 14 blazes still threatening land and property from south of Los Angeles to the state’s border with Oregon.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke — wrapping a two-day tour of the Carr Fire’s path to the west of Redding, northern California — will meet rescuers alongside Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
Firefighters made encouraging progress on the inferno, which has destroyed more than 1,000 homes and other property, over the weekend, according to federal and local government data.
But the 203,000-acre (82,000-hectare) blaze is still less than two-thirds contained after killing eight people and prompting the evacuation of 40,000.
The temperatures have remained in double digits but emergency workers say they are bracing for hotter weather, dry air and gusty winds over the coming days.
Around 130 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Redding, the Mendocino Complex wildfire, California’s largest in history, has scorched 345,000 acres.
The blaze is made up of the Ranch and River fires, which were respectively 59 percent and 93 percent contained by Monday morning, according to Cal Fire.
Zinke’s visit with Perdue comes days after President Donald Trump suggested that California’s environmental policies had deprived firefighters of water and left too many trees that could fuel fires.
Some activists have acknowledged that many of the state’s forests are too dense and require more aggressive management but Cal Fire officials have stated they have enough water.
Inaccessible terrain
Other experts have added that California’s most destructive blazes have started in shrublands, not thick forests, and that the devastating fire season has been lengthened by climate change.
Zinke angered activists by downplaying the importance of global warming in wildfire management as he began his California visit on Sunday.
“I’ve heard the climate change argument back and forth,” he said in an interview with television station KCRA 3.
“This has nothing to do with climate change. This has to do with active forest management.”
Fourteen of California’s 20 largest wildfires have started since 2003 — a period boasting some of the hottest, driest years on record in the US.
Zinke focused instead on environmentalists, accusing them of delaying forest management projects involving the removal of trees, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
Congress passed a measure in March as part of the omnibus spending bill providing almost $2 billion for containing wildfires in fiscal year 2018, while in California legislators have made $200 million available.
Zinke has said that he and Perdue will ask Congress to streamline procedures for clearing out dead and dying trees.
Authorities have charged a 51-year-old man, Forrest Gordon Clark, with multiple arson-related charges in connection with the 22,714-acre Holy Fire in Orange County, to the southeast of Los Angeles.
Evacuation orders remained in place for thousands of people living in the path of the blaze as the flames edged toward a retirement community between the Santa Ana Mountains and an interstate highway.
The wildfire prompted voluntary evacuations for 1,300 units in the Trilogy Glen Ivy community, while some of the area’s affected districts have delayed the return to school until next week.
Plumes of dark gray smoke could be seen billowing from behind a nearby hillside as containment for the Holy Fire rose to 52 percent.
Helicopters and airplanes continued to drop fire retardant on flames burning in otherwise inaccessible terrain as the fire entered its eighth day.