Officials in California ordered some residents east of the city of Fresno to evacuate their homes as firefighters continued to battle wildfires on Friday that were ignited by lightning and had spread to more than 10,000 acres.
The fires formed from the more than 1,000 lightning strikes that struck eastern Fresno County in the span of three hours on Monday, said California’s firefighting agency, Cal Fire. By Friday, a crew of more than 1,500 firefighters was battling three large fires and several smaller ones, which fire officials called the Fresno June Lightning complex, that were threatening over 900 homes and disrupting power and communication lines.
Rising temperatures coupled with low humidity, expected over the next 72 hours, could contribute to increased fire activity, the agency said.
The blazes were some of the largest wildfires that have burned in California during what has already been an unusually active year. Wildfires have burned more than 112,000 acres in the state this year, far outpacing the five-year average of 20,500 acres, Cal Fire said.
Around 7:30 a.m. on Friday, Cal Fire said the fires near Fresno were 37 percent contained.
While the size of the fires near Fresno has swelled over the past few days, the containment has strengthened, too, as firefighters worked to merge some of the fires, a tactic to stop them from spreading by encircling them, according to Sergio Arellano, a spokesman for Cal Fire.
Firefighters were likely to cover more ground overnight as lower temperatures raised the relative humidity of the air, Mr. Arellano said.
“The containment lines are holding well,” he said, adding that he expected the evacuation orders and warnings to be lifted in the next day or two.
There were no reports of fatalities, Cal Fire said.
The National Weather Service said that an area of high pressure coming over the deserts from the southwest was pushing the smoke from the fires to the northeast. Dry and gusty conditions were expected over the weekend, raising the risk of grass fires across the region, it said.
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