Deadly Los Angeles wildfire burns with subdued fury after change in weather

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Firefighters have tightened their grip on a deadly Los Angeles wildfire burning with subdued fury on Sunday after extremely dry desert winds that had stoked the flames gave way to moister, gentler breezes blowing in from the Pacific.

The so-called Saddleridge fire, which erupted Thursday night and raced across the northern edge of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, had scorched nearly 8,000 acres (3,237 hectares) by Sunday but was mostly confined to foothills and canyons away from populated areas, fire officials said.

As of Sunday morning, firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around 41% of the fire’s perimeter, more than double the containment level reported a day earlier as authorities lifted all remaining evacuation notices.

At the height of the blaze on Friday, authorities had ordered the evacuation of some 23,000 homes, comprising about 100,000 people, as flames invaded several communities in northern Los Angeles.

One man who stayed put in an effort to defend his own property from the flames suffered a fatal heart attack, and three firefighters out of some 1,000 assigned to the blaze sustained minor injuries, authorities said.

Thirty-two homes and other structures were destroyed or damaged.

The last two of several emergency evacuation shelters set up during the blaze were closed on Sunday, the American Red Cross said.

A shift in wind patterns was a key factor in the improved fire outlook over the weekend.

Initially stoked by gale-force Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert east of the city, the blaze had raced through dry brush and chaparral at the rate of 800 acres per hour at the outset.

On Saturday, however, lighter winds laden with greater moisture began blowing in from the ocean, helping fire crews to halt advancing flames and extend containment lines, city fire spokesman Nicholas Prange said.

“With the winds being reduced, fire behavior is less severe, so firefighters are advancing around the perimeter,” he told Reuters by phone. “We can make more headway with containment than before.”

Smoke from the blaze lingered over much of Los Angeles, leading the South Coast Air Quality Management District to issue an advisory for unhealthy air quality for the San Fernando Valley, as well as the Santa Clarita Valley to the west and the San Gabriel Mountains to the north.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation. Fire officials said they were investigating witness reports in local media linking the fire to a power transmission line.

The Saddleridge was the largest among a spate of wildfires across California that burned a total of nearly 160,000 acres (64,000 hectares) and destroyed 134 structures in recent days, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

A separate, smaller fire east of Los Angeles in Riverside County killed two people and destroyed dozens of homes last week. That blaze began when burning refuse dumped by a garbage truck ignited dry vegetation on the ground.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Daniel Wallis)

Southern California couple find wedding ring in ashes of wildfire

Ishu and Laura Rao, return to the rubble of their home which they lost in a wildfire, to retrieve their wedding ring, in Alameda, California, U.S., in this July 8, 2018 photo obtained from social media. MANDATORY CREDIT. Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department/via REUTERS

(Reuters) – As wildfires destroyed dozens of homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents in California, at least one couple had a bit of good news.

Ishu and Laura Rao searched the ashes of their incinerated Santa Barbara County home Sunday and found their prize: Laura’s wedding and engagement rings.

She had taken them off before going to sleep Friday and had no time to retrieve them when the couple escaped the fast-moving blaze Holiday Fire with Ishu’s two daughters, their three dogs and a cat, said Mike Eliason, a spokesman with the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

The married couple of eight months were escorted back to their property Sunday to hunt for the rings.

A wedding ring belonging to Ishu and Laura Rao, is retrieved from the rubble of their home which they lost in a wildfire, in Alameda, California, U.S., in this July 8, 2018 photo obtained from social media. MANDATORY CREDIT. Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department/via REUTERS

A wedding ring belonging to Ishu and Laura Rao, is retrieved from the rubble of their home which they lost in a wildfire, in Alameda, California, U.S., in this July 8, 2018 photo obtained from social media. MANDATORY CREDIT. Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department/via REUTERS

“Wouldn’t have believe it, but they found them,” Eliason said. They were damaged and charred, but still recognizable.

Ishu Rao then dropped to one knee, put the rings on her finger and proposed all over again. The rings still fit, Eliason said, “And she said yes.”

The fire that destroyed their home was 80 percent contained early Monday, Eliason said. “We’re just mopping up hot-spots now.”

Elsewhere, some firefighters were gaining ground in containing the wildfires in California early Monday. Others just held the lines against the blazes feeding off the dry brush in the California heat, officials said.

Firefighters should get some more good news this week with cooler temperatures, the National Weather Service said. Scorching heat, high winds and low humidity have fanned dozens of fires across the western United States this summer.

The fires had burned more than 2.9 million acres (1.17 million hectares) through Friday, already more than the annual average of about 2.4 million acres over the past 10 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

The remains of an unidentified person were found on Friday near a home burned to the ground by the Klamathon Fire, which broke out on Thursday near California’s border with Oregon. It marked the first fatality of the fire season in California.

A firefighter was injured battling the blaze but has since been released from the hospital, authorities said at a news conference on Sunday night.

The Klamathon Fire, which has destroyed 81 structures and blackened about 35,000 acres, was 25 percent contained on Sunday evening, according to Cal Fire. More than 1,500 people have been affected by the flames.

Elsewhere in Northern California, the County Fire has charred more than 90,200 acres in sparsely populated wooded areas of Napa and Yolo Counties.

Some 2,800 firefighters faced with inaccessible terrain, high temperatures and low humidity, were battling the fire, which was 65 percent contained.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Maria Caspani in New York and Makini Brice in Washington; editing by Larry King)

Property losses mount on Hawaii’s Big Island as lava flow spreads

Lava flows into the Pacific Ocean in the Kapoho area, east of Pahoa, during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

By Terray Sylvester

PAHOA, Hawaii (Reuters) – A river of lava spewing from the foot of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano swallowed about three dozen more homes on the Big Island during a weekend of destruction that brought to nearly 120 the number of dwellings devoured since last month, officials said on Monday.

Mounting property losses were reported a day after five or six people who initially chose to stay in the newly evacuated Kapoho area after road access was cut off were rescued by helicopter, according to the Hawaii County Civil Defense agency.

All but a few of the estimated 500 inhabitants of Kapoho and adjacent Vacationland development are now believed to have fled their homes, an agency spokesman said. The area lies near the site of a seaside village buried in lava from a 1960 eruption.

The latest damage came from a large lava flow that crept several miles (km) before severing a key highway junction at Kapoho on Saturday and then obliterating about a half dozen blocks of the subdivision over the weekend, the spokesman said.

Lava flows into the Pacific Ocean in the Kapoho area, east of Pahoa, during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Lava flows into the Pacific Ocean in the Kapoho area, east of Pahoa, during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

One finger of the lava poured into a small freshwater lake, boiling away all its water late on Saturday, while another finger spilled into Kapoho Bay on Sunday night, officials said.

On Monday, civil defense reported a total of 117 homes and other structures destroyed across the island’s larger lava-stricken region, as the eruption from Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, continued through its 33rd day.

About three dozen of those structures, mostly private homes and vacation rentals, were lost during the weekend in Kapoho. The rest were consumed weeks earlier in the larger Leilani Estates subdivision several miles (km) to the west, where lava-spouting fissures in the ground first opened on May 3.

About 2,000 residents have been displaced from Leilani since earlier this month as fountains of lava and high concentrations of toxic sulfur dioxide gas continued unabated. A mandatory evacuation of much the subdivision was imposed last week.

Plumes of volcanic ash belched into the air by periodic daily explosions from the crater at Kilauea’s summit have posed an additional nuisance and a health concern to nearby communities.

So too have airborne volcanic glass fibers, called “Pele’s hair,” wispy strands carried aloft by the wind from lava fountains and named for the volcano goddess of Hawaiian myth.

Seaside residents and boaters also have been warned to avoid noxious clouds of laze — a term combining the words “lava” and “haze” — formed when lava reacts with seawater to form a mix of acid fumes, steam and glass-like specks.

Lava flows have knocked out telephone and power lines, causing widespread communication outages, and forced the shutdown of a geothermal energy plant that normally provides about a quarter of the island’s electricity.

At the same time, most of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, one of the island’s biggest tourist attractions, remains closed indefinitely due to hazards from ash and volcanic rock ejected from the summit crater, and accompanying earthquakes that have damaged park facilities.

Kilauea’s current upheaval comes on the heels of an eruption cycle that began in 1983 and had continued nearly nonstop for 35 years, destroying more than 200 homes. Scientists say they are unsure whether the latest activity is part of the same eruption phase or a new one, and how long it may last.

(Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler)