Tag Archives: California

Uber, Lyft shares jump as California set to pass gig-worker ballot measure

By Tina Bellon and Munsif Vengattil

(Reuters) – Uber and Lyft stocks soared on Wednesday after California voters endorsed the gig economy’s blistering campaign not to count drivers as employees, even as questions loomed over whether the companies can secure similar privileges in other U.S. states.

Voters in California on Tuesday backed a ballot proposal by Uber Technologies Inc, Lyft Inc and its allies that cements app-based food delivery and ride-hailing drivers’ status as independent contractors, rather than employees.

According to state figures, 58% supported the measure, with nearly 99% of precincts at least partially reporting. The results are incomplete and must also be certified.

Uber’s shares rose 16%, while Lyft jumped 18%. The companies, along with DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates, have collectively poured more than $205 million into the campaign.

Reclassifying drivers could have amounted to more than $392 million each for Uber and Lyft in annual employee-related costs, a Reuters calculation showed.

The companies warned they could cut 80% of drivers, double prices and even leave California, their home market, if they lost. California represented 9%, roughly $1.63 billion, of Uber’s 2019 global rides and food delivery gross bookings, and some 16% of Lyft’s total rides.

The ballot measure, known as Proposition 22, marks the culmination of years of legal and legislative wrangling over a business model that introduced millions of people to the convenience of ordering food or a ride online.

While the proposal maintains workers’ status as independent contractors, it provides them with some benefits, including minimum pay rates, healthcare subsidies and accident insurance.

Uber in an email to California drivers on Tuesday night said it looked forward to providing the new benefits as soon as possible and would offer more details in the coming weeks.

“The future of independent work is more secure because so many drivers like you spoke up and made your voice heard – and voters across the state listened,” the Uber email said.

Uber is scheduled to report third-quarter results after the bell on Thursday.

A group of labor organizations that organized a campaign to oppose Proposition 22 with a fraction of the companies’ funding on Tuesday night called the Yes campaign deceitful.

“The end of this campaign is only the beginning in the fight to ensure gig workers are provided fair wages, sick pay and care when they’re hurt at work,” Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary Treasurer of the California Labor Federation, said in a statement.

The question of whether gig workers should be treated as employees has also become a national issue in U.S. politics, dividing Democrats and Republicans.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, have both voiced their strong support for California’s labor law, while the U.S. Labor Department under President Donald Trump has published a rule that would make it easier to classify workers as independent contractors.

While trend-setting California had been the first state to pass a law that requires companies that control how workers do their jobs to classify those workers as employees. But it is far from the only one and unlike in California, laws in many other states could not be reversed by ballot measure.

Stephen Ju, a Credit Suisse analyst, in a note on Wednesday said Proposition 22’s success may stunt other regional efforts to change classification.

Edward Yruma, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said the measure could provide a template for other jurisdictions to provide drivers enhanced protections and benefits without reclassifying them employees.

Legislators in Democratic New York, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon and Illinois have introduced similar laws, which have been halted by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Several other states have launched audits over failures by app-based companies to pay into unemployment insurance.

Massachusetts in July sued Uber and Lyft over allegedly misclassifying their drivers.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon and Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Alistair Bell)

California voters to decide fate of gig economy workers

By Tina Bellon and Lisa Baertlein

(Reuters) – Trend-setting California votes on the future of the gig economy on Tuesday, deciding whether to back a ballot proposal by Uber and its allies that would cement app-based food delivery and ride-hail drivers’ status as independent contractors, not employees.

The measure, known as Proposition 22, marks the culmination of years of legal and legislative wrangling over a business model that has introduced millions of people to the convenience of ordering food or a ride with the push of a button.

Companies describe the contest as a matter of ensuring flexibility for a new generation of workers who want to choose when and how they work. Opponents see an effort to exploit workers and avoid employee-related costs that could amount to more than $392 million each for Uber Technologies Inc, Lyft Inc, a Reuters calculation showed.

Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart and Postmates, some of whom threaten to shut down in California if they lose, have poured $202 million into what has become the most expensive ballot campaign in state history.

“This debate is very emotional for me. I want to keep driving when I want and for whom I want,” said retiree Jan Krueger, 62, who drives part-time for Lyft in Sacramento and got a “Mom Lyft” tattoo on her shoulder.

“Everybody is super concerned about (the companies) leaving or raising prices and not being available in remote areas,” Krueger said of her passengers and driver friends.

The proposition is the app makers’ response to a new California law that requires companies that control how workers do their jobs to classify those workers as employees.

The app companies argue the law does not apply to them because they are technology platforms, not hiring entities, and that their drivers control how they work.

Companies warn they could cut 80% of drivers, double prices and even leave California, if they are forced to pay benefits including minimum wage, unemployment insurance, health care and workers’ compensation.

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates also have challenged the new law in court, but judges so far ruled against them. Uber and Lyft recently lost an appeal, which narrows their options if Prop 22 fails.

California represents 9%, roughly $1.63 billion, of Uber’s 2019 global rides and food delivery gross bookings, and some 16% of Lyft’s total rides.

Prop 22 would leave gig workers as contractors and provide them with more modest benefits than state law, including minimum pay while riders are in their cars, healthcare subsidies and accident insurance.

Company-sponsored surveys have found that more than 70% of current gig workers do not want to be employees, but labor groups have questioned those polls, saying drivers are divided.

Los Angeles Uber driver Christine Tringali said the companies’ actions were shameful.

“How can someone fight so hard to avoid paying people a living wage and giving them job security? We work just as hard as anyone else,” Tringali said.

Californians are split on the issue. An Oct. 26 poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies of over 6,600 state residents found that 46% of voters would vote in favor of the ballot measure and 42% against it, with the remainder still undecided. The poll had a sampling error of 2 percentage points.

First-time voter and college student Jonah Cervantes’ mail-in ballot included a “yes” on Prop 22. He hopes to start driving for Uber or Lyft in a few months.

“It would be a lot harder for people to just hop on” as new drivers without Prop 22, said Cervantes.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; additional reporting by Lucy Nicholson in Los Angeles; editing by Peter Henderson and Lisa Shumaker)

Trump administration denies California request for more wildfire aid

By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) – The Trump administration has denied a request by California for additional wildfire recovery relief, saying the September blazes, part of the state’s record-setting fire year, were not severe enough.

“The early September fires were not of such severity and magnitude to exceed the combined capabilities of the state, affected local governments, voluntary agencies and other responding federal agencies,” Federal Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow said in an emailed statement on Friday.

More than 4.1 million acres have burned in California this year, shattering a previous record.

President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration for some parts of the state in August. California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent him a request on Sept. 28 seeking another major disaster declaration for seven counties affected by fires that ignited earlier that month.

A major disaster declaration provides federal assistance for individuals, infrastructure and emergency and permanent work, according to FEMA’s web site.

“The more recent and separate California submission was not supported by the relevant data that States must provide for approval and the President concurred with the FEMA Administrator’s recommendation,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email.

California officials were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by David Gregorio)

California court ordered to reconsider Scott Peterson murder conviction

By Mimi Dwyer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Two months after winning a reversal of his death sentence, lawyers for Scott Peterson, the California man found guilty of murdering his wife and unborn child in a sensational 2004 trial, have persuaded the state’s high court to order a review of his conviction.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday sent the case back to trial court in San Mateo County to consider Peterson’s contention that his conviction on two counts of murder be set aside on grounds of prejudicial misconduct by a member of the jury.

The high court ruled in August that the trial judge had erred in jury selection, but rejected Peterson’s appeal of his conviction in the 2002 slaying of his pregnant wife, Laci, who went missing on Christmas Eve that year.

In a nearly 300-page habeas corpus petition originally filed in 2015, Peterson’s attorneys outlined 19 claims arguing for a new trial, the first being that one juror concealed a possible bias against the defendant.

According to the petition, the juror “had lied her way onto” the panel by falsely denying that she had ever been the victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit, even though, while pregnant, she had sought a restraining order against a boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.

“Someone who has gone through an experience where someone was threatening their unborn child will probably have a perspective on charges brought against a defendant for harming an unborn child,” Cliff Gardner, an attorney for Peterson, told Reuters on Thursday. “They may come in with a bias that other people wouldn’t have.”

The California Supreme Court ordered the state to show “why the relief prayed for should not be granted on the ground that Juror No. 7 committed prejudicial misconduct by not disclosing her prior involvement with other legal proceedings.” Prosecutors were given until Nov. 13 to respond.

John Goold, a spokesman for prosecutors handling the motion, cautioned that the order does not automatically lead to a new trial, but requires the lower court to consider a single issue raised by Peterson’s defense team in challenging the conviction.

(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Up in smoke: California wine country counts cost of wildfire damage

By Marco Hernandez and Simon Scarr

(Reuters) – When a wildfire swept down California’s Napa Valley in August, winemaker Patrick Elliot-Smith stayed put, fighting the encroaching flames with water pumps and laying fire breaks around his vines in a battle with nature that lasted three days.

He and his son managed to save their family-run Elan winery in the valley’s Atlas Peak appellation.

But smoke damage from the LNU Complex fire was so bad that they – along with dozens of other wineries damaged or burned down by some of the worst U.S. wildfires in living memory – decided not to harvest any grapes this year or sell fruit to other producers.

“We cannot afford a bad vintage,” Elliot-Smith told Reuters. “It looks like a lunar landscape here.”

When smoke is absorbed into a vine and concentrates in the fruit, it alters a grape’s chemistry and ultimately its taste, leaving some wines with “ashtray aromas” that may appear during fermentation or even as late as after bottling.

Smoke has blanketed much of the U.S. West and fires have charred more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) in California so far in 2020, more than twice the previous record for any year.

The still active Glass Fire has destroyed dozens of buildings, including the mansion-like Chateau Boswell winery and a farmhouse containing storage, bottling and fermentation facilities at the Tuscan castle-style Castello di Amorosa.

Both producers’ premium reds sell for upwards of $200 a bottle.

The Newton Vineyard winery also went up in flames, according to a Reuters photographer who visited the site, observing rivulets of red wine mixed with ash flowing down its main access road.

HUNDREDS OF SMOKE TAINT CLAIMS

Susan Meyer, owner of RustRidge Winery, said her crop was a write-off “both from the fire itself and the smoke that lingered for days. Many plants were burned by fire but others died from the heat exposure,” she said.

Her insurance provider alone was dealing with 600 claims for smoke taint, she added.

The true impact on a $70 billion-a-year national industry centered in California, Oregon and Washington state will not be known for months as the wildfire season is not yet over.

While grapes picked from the vine before exposure are safe from smoke taint, many winemakers with as yet unpicked harvests are awaiting the results of smoke testing from backlogged wine laboratories before deciding whether to proceed.

A notice this week on the website of Napa Valley-based ETS Laboratories warned of a wait till November for new tests.

Its co-founder and technical director, Gordon Burns, said it was too early to speculate as to the overall damage.

“Every location is different, and smoke exposure may be transitory and as little as none at all. Any fire impacts will certainly not be to the entire vintage in any of the affected winegrowing regions,” he added.

Eric Jensen, owner of Booker and My Favorite Neighbor wineries in California’s Paso Robles region, said he expected his crop to have escaped damaged “because of the distance that the smoke traveled to get to us.

“But in Napa and (neighboring) Sonoma, the proximity is causing issues.”

Further North in Oregon’s picturesque Willamette Valley, Jason Hanson of Hanson Vineyards expects his crews may only harvest five tons of grapes, down from at least 25 last year, due to smoke taint from nearby fires.

“With the dense smoke that we’ve had at the ground level for so long now, almost everything has to be affected or damaged,” Hanson said.

“I have a yearly fight with the birds. This year I’ll just let them win.”

(writing by John Stonestreet)

Record California wildfires burn over four million acres

By Adrees Latif

NAPA, Calif. (Reuters) – Wildfires in California have burned more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) in 2020, over twice the previous record for any year and an area larger than Connecticut, the state’s fire agency reported on Sunday.

The most-populous U.S. state has suffered five of its six largest wildfires in history this year as heat waves and dry-lightning sieges coincided with drier conditions that climate scientists blame on global warming.

At least 31 people have died in this year’s fires and over 8,454 homes and other structures have been destroyed, Cal Fire said in a statement.

California’s previous record burn area was nearly 2 million acres in 2018 when the state had its most deadly and destructive wildfire that killed at least 85 civilians and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures in and around the mountain town of Paradise.

“There’s no words to describe what is taking place and what continues to take place,” said Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean. “It goes to show how dry the state is and how volatile the vegetation is.”

California suffered a prolonged drought from around 2010 to 2017, causing diseases and insect infestations that killed millions of trees. That followed a century of fire suppression that also built up brush and dead trees, turning some forests into tinderboxes.

City real-estate prices and second-home construction have seen the growth of communities in peripheral, wildland areas that have naturally burned for millennia.

In the world-famous wine country of Napa County, the so-called Glass Fire has damaged over a dozen wineries. Vineyards worked through the night on Saturday to pick grape varieties that can resist smoke damage. Some crops heavily exposed to smoke may be a write-off.

Firefighters were expected to get a break from cooler temperatures in Northern California this week, with a chance of rain, Cal Fire said.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif; Additional reporting and writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Napa Valley wineries menaced by wildfire, as second California blaze kills three

By Adrees Latif and Stephen Lam

CALISTOGA, Calif. (Reuters) – Firefighters in Northern California on Tuesday struggled to make headway against two fast-moving, destructive wildfires, one threatening towns and wineries in Napa Valley and another that killed three people in the Cascade foothills closer to the Oregon border.

The three fatalities in the so-called Zogg Fire that erupted on Sunday in Shasta County, about 200 miles (322 km) north of San Francisco, were reported Monday evening by the local sheriff. As of Tuesday there were still no details on how or when they perished.

All three were civilians, and their deaths brought to 30 the number of people killed since January – 29 of them just over the past six weeks – in what now stands as the worst year on record for California wildfires in terms of acreage burned

Farther south, the Glass Fire also raged for a third day in wine country, where it destroyed the popular mansion-like Chateau Boswell winery Sunday night and a building at the Castello di Amorosa winery, whose landmark architecture was inspired by a 13th-century Tuscan castle, on Monday.

But wine industry officials said the longer-term ramifications of the Glass Fire and a spate of other blazes that came before it is likely to be a 2020 vintage of diminished volume because of grapes spoiled by heavy exposure to smoke.

Some 80,000 people have been placed under evacuation orders in the middle of harvest season, including all 5,300 residents of Calistoga, a resort town known for its hot springs and mud baths and the site of the Castello di Amorosa complex.

Although both fires were still zero-percent contained, calmer winds could give firefighters an edge on Tuesday despite continuing above-normal heat and low humidity, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, officials said.

The Zogg fire, burning near the town of Redding, has destroyed 146 structures and charred more than 40,000 acres (16,180 hectares) of grassy hillsides and oak woodlands thick with dense, dry scrub. About 15,000 structures were listed as threatened, and 2,200 residents were under evacuation orders or advisories.

After merging with three other blazes, the Glass Fire had spread across more than 42,000 acres (16,990 hectares) in Napa and Sonoma counties, incinerating at least 80 homes and 32 other structures, according to Cal Fire.

Napa Valley residents Matthew Rivard and Amanda Crean parked their car by a sign reading “Welcome to the World Famous Wine Growing Region” on Monday night and watched flames surround the Schramsberg Vineyards, known for its sparkling wines.

WINE COUNTRY HAVOC

A short distance to the northwest, flames destroyed a farmhouse containing a wine-storage chamber, a fermentation room, a bottling facility and offices at the Castello di Amorosa winery, but its distinctive castle complex and tasting room remained unscathed, Chief Executive Georg Salzner said.

The majority of its wine supply, about 100,000 cases stored elsewhere, remained safe, he said. The owner, Dario Sattui, had hurried to the complex before dawn on Monday to find the castle surrounded by flames and called for help, Salzner told Reuters.

“The main building, which was not affected, might have burned down too if it hadn’t been for the firefighters,” he said.

In the heart of Calistoga, the evacuation left its main street, known for boutiques and tasting rooms, looking like a ghost town, according to a Reuters photographer.

As of Wednesday, no wineries were reported to have burned in neighboring Sonoma County, though a “couple of outbuildings and accessory buildings” were damaged, said Michael Haney, executive director of the Sonoma County Vintners trade group.

The Glass Fire struck midway through the traditional grape-harvesting season in Napa and Sonoma counties, both world-renowned among California’s wine-producing regions and still reeling from a cluster of large wildfires earlier this summer.

The full effect on the region’s wine business remained to be seen. But Haney said vintners would likely scale back production of certain wines due to smoke exposure to grapes still on the vines when the fires struck.

“I do know there are wineries saying we have been impacted and we won’t be making as much wine,” he said. Several Napa Valley growers said recently they would forgo a 2020 vintage altogether due to smoke contamination of their crop.

The blazes in Shasta County and wine country marked the latest flashpoints in a destructive spate of wildfires this summer across the U.S. West.

California fires have scorched over 3.8 million acres (1.5 million hectares) since January – far exceeding any single year in state history. They have been stoked by increasingly frequent and prolonged bouts of extreme heat, high winds and dry-lightning sieges that scientists attribute to climate change.

More than 7,000 homes and other structures have burned statewide this year.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif and Stephen Lam; Additional reporting and writing by Andrew Hay and Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis)

California wine country fire quadruples in size, more evacuations ordered

By Adrees Latif and Jonathan Allen

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (Reuters) – A wildfire in northern California’s Napa Valley wine country more than quadrupled in size overnight to some 11,000 acres (4,450 hectares), burning homes and vineyards and forcing officials to order thousands of residents to evacuate on Monday.

As the small city of Santa Rosa emptied out around him, Jas Sihota stationed himself on his front porch with his garden hose close at hand, darting out every 15 minutes or so to douse spot fires around neighboring houses seeded by wind-blown embers under a hazy red sun.

Sihota, a radiology technician at a nearby hospital, had not slept in some 24 hours since the blaze, since named the Glass Fire, ignited on Sunday morning near Calistoga about 60 miles (96.5 km) north of San Francisco.

“I wouldn’t have a house if I didn’t stay,” said Sihota, adding that neither would some of his neighbors. At least 10 homes elsewhere on the street beyond the reach of his hose were destroyed.

He weighed when he might finally grab some sleep, wondering if he could stay up perhaps another six hours on adrenaline. “I’m not going to do it till I feel comfortable,” he said.

It was the latest inferno in a historically destructive year throughout the U.S. West. In California alone, wildfires so far have scorched more than 3.7 million acres, far exceeding any single year in state history.

Since Aug. 15, fires in the state have killed 26 people and destroyed more than 7,000 structures. Climate change has contributed to wildfires’ growing intensity, scientists say.

Early on Monday, new evacuation orders were issued in Sonoma and Napa counties, including parts of the cities of Santa Rosa and St. Helena.

Residents at Oakmont Gardens, a retirement community in Santa Rosa, leaned on walkers as they waited to board a bus taking them to safety, their face masks doubling as protection against smoke and the novel coronavirus.

More than a thousand firefighters are battling the Glass Fire, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), some in planes that trailed red plumes of fire retardant over the region’s famed vineyards. None of it had been contained as of Monday morning, said Cal Fire, which was also monitoring 26 other major wildfires in the state.

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning through to the end of Monday, forecasting low humidity and gusts of wind up to 55 miles per hour (89 km per hour) through certain canyons. The fire also prompted evacuation of the 151-bed Adventist Health St. Helena hospital on Sunday for a second time in recent weeks after lightning-sparked blazes swept through the area in August.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif in Santa Rosa and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Stephen Lam in Santa Rosa and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by David Gregorio and Bill Berkrot)

California wine country wildfire forces evacuation of hospital, hundreds of homes

By Stephen Lam and Steve Gorman

ST. HELENA, Calif. (Reuters) – A wind-driven wildfire erupted on Sunday in the heart of northern California’s Napa Valley wine country to spread across nearly 2,000 acres (809 hectares), forcing the evacuation of a hospital and hundreds of homes, authorities said.

Fire crews were out in force, scrambling to fend off flames threatening neighborhoods and vineyards at the northern end of the famed wine-growing valley and surrounding hillsides, about 75 miles (120 km) north of San Francisco.

The blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, broke out before dawn near Calistoga and raced toward the adjacent communities of Deer Park and St. Helena, with flames reaching within a mile of the Adventist Health St. Helena hospital.

All 55 patients there at the time were safely evacuated by ambulance and helicopter over the course of five hours from about 7 a.m., hospital spokeswoman Linda Williams told Reuters.

“We had ambulances lined up from all over the Bay area,” she said, adding that although smoke shrouded the facility, the skies above were clear enough for helicopters’ airlift efforts.

It was the second wildfire-related evacuation of the 151-bed hospital in a month, after a massive cluster of lightning-sparked blazes that swept several counties north of the San Francisco Bay region in August.

Authorities ordered about 600 homes evacuated on Sunday, with residents of 1,400 more warned to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice, said Tyree Zander, a spokesman for the state’s forestry and fire protection department (CalFire). The notices affected at least 5,000 people, he added.

By evening, flames stoked by winds gusting up to 50 mph (80 kph) had scorched about 1,800 acres (728 hectares) of grassy rolling hillsides and oak woodlands, with little or no containment, Zander said.

FIRE AT HARVEST TIME

The cause of the fire is being investigated. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but a Reuters photographer in St. Helena saw some structures that had been burned.

The blaze erupted midway through the traditional grape-harvesting period in the Napa Valley, world renowned as one of California’s premiere wine-producing regions. The area’s 475 wineries account for just 4% of the state’s total annual grape harvest but half of the retail value of all California wines sold, according to the Napa Valley Vintners trade group.

Of Napa’s 16 wine-growing districts, or sub-appellations, the Howell Mountain area may have faced the greatest threat, said Lisa Covey, a spokeswoman for Hall Family Wines, which kept open during the day all its three tasting rooms in the county.

Napa and other wine-growing regions have been hit by wildfires in and around the Bay area for several years. Susan Krausz, co-owner of Arkenstone Estate Vineyards in the Howell Mountain community of Angwin, said it would take days or weeks to assess the impact of the latest blaze on valley vintners.

“Most people have harvested,” she said, but added, “Any time’s a bad time for a fire.”

Tom Kaljian, 78, a realtor who owns a house about halfway between Calistoga and St. Helena, defied evacuation orders to spend the day with his wife hosing down their home and dry brush along a fence line separating their property from the Silverado Trail, a key north-south roadway.

“We were told to get out of here, but I was trying to protect our little abode, so we stayed,” he told Reuters by telephone.

After firefighters told him the house was no longer in danger, he added, “I stopped watering at that point, and came in and took a nap.”

The Glass Fire came as the Pacific Gas and Electric Company said it was temporarily halting power to transmission lines in parts of 16 counties across northern and central California to guard against greater wildfire risks in hot, windy, dry weather.

The public safety power shutoffs were expected to affect about 65,000 regional homes and businesses, said PG&E, the state’s largest electric utility.

A red flag warning for extreme wildfire risks for Napa Valley would run through Monday morning, Zander said.

CalFire said a fire weather watch would start on Monday across much of Southern California, following the forecast return of hot, gusty Santa Ana winds and low humidity.

California wildfires have scorched more than 3.7 million acres in the first nine months of 2020, far exceeding any single year in state history, killing 26 people and destroying more than 7,000 structures.

(Reporting by Stephen Lam in St. Helena; Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Clarence Fernandez)

Crews make headway against massive California wildfire

By Mimi Dwyer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Firefighters notched a victory in their battle to beat back a massive blaze raging outside Los Angeles, more than doubling containment in the past 24 hours, the U.S. Forest Service said on Wednesday.

The Bobcat Fire, which has been burning in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles since Sept. 6, was 38% contained as of Wednesday morning, John Clearwater, USFS spokesperson for Angeles National Forest, said in an email update.

The fire has so far burned more than 113,000 acres but remained relatively stable overnight. The flames were 17% contained on Tuesday.

The Bobcat Fire, one of the largest and most dangerous fires in recorded Los Angeles history, is just one element stoking the worst fire season California has seen to date.

For more than a week it has threatened to overtake the Mount Wilson Observatory, a California landmark and beloved historical site that was home to major astronomical advancements in the early 20th century.

Some 1,556 firefighters are currently deployed to combat it, the Forest Service said.

Wildfires have ravaged the West Coast this summer and pushed firefighters to their limits. At least 26 people have died in fires across California since August 15, including three firefighters, according to the state agency CAL FIRE.

One of those firefighters died as a result of a fire sparked by a botched gender reveal party.

Roughly 3.4 million acres have burned across California during the same period.

Another 10 people have died and approximately 2 million acres have burned in fires in Washington and Oregon.

California has seen five of its largest fires on record in this wildfire season alone. Outside Los Angeles, the momentary reprieve could dissipate by the weekend, when weather was expected to grow warmer and drier, and forecasts showed the possibility of gusty winds, the Forest Service said.

(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and David Gregorio)