California firefighters were struggling to contain the Delta Fire three days after it scorched dry brush along the Sacramento River. The flames have already burned more than 30,000 acres and was zero percent contained as of Friday night.
- The Delta Fire in Northern California scorched nearly 25,000 acres of dry wildland as it raged on for a third day.
- Fire officials said they were making progress, but there was no containment as of Friday night.
- This latest fire comes as California struggles to recover from the worst fire in state history. The Mendocino Complex fire took off in late July and burned nearly 460,000 acres.
Firefighters in Northern California struggled to get the upper hand on a three-day-old wildfire that scorched more than 30,000 acres as of Friday evening.
Warm weather and winds amplified the danger as flames moves through the Shasta-Trinity National Forest region.
The wildfire was growing “incredibly fast” after having burned 22,000 acres by Thursday, Shasta-Trinity Cal Fire Unit Chief Mike Hebrard told local reporters Friday. It was zero-percent contained.
The Delta Fire was initially reported as three separate fires on Wednesday. But those combined into one and spread at a rate of one mile-per-hour at its height, Capt. Brandon Vaccaro, a fire spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
Vaccaro said he believed the fire was human-caused, but the circumstances were not immediately clear.
At least 300 people were forced to evacuate their homes in Shasta and Trinity counties. Some 1,600 residents in the town of Dunsmuir, about 280 miles north of Sacramento, were told to be prepared to evacuate.
Two homes in small mountain communities were damaged by the fire as of Friday, according to another Los Angeles Times report Friday.
The wildfire led to major traffic disruptions in the region when the flames threatened Interstate 5. A roughly 45-mile section of the freeway has been closed since Wednesday.
California witnessed the worst wildfire in its history in July. The Mendocino Complex Fire, which also occurred in the northern part of the state and scorched more than 450,000 acres, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.