An out-of-control wildfire burning Sunday near an entrance to Yosemite National Park has destroyed eight homes and threatened thousands more as flames forced authorities to cut power to the park.
The blaze has charred more than 18,000 acres since Friday as wooded slopes ignited amid hot, dry conditions that have plagued California for months. The fire was completely uncontained Sunday.
"There's no fire history in the past 100 hundred years. That's one of the reasons this fire's been able to burn so erratically," said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
In Southern California, about 4,000 visitors were evacuated Sunday from the Los Angeles zoo as a fast-moving brush fire burned nearby in Griffith Park.
Flames came within about 1,000 feet of a California condor enclosure in the zoo, forcing the relocation of the condors and two vultures, zoo spokesman Jason Jacobs said.
The fire had burned about 25 acres and was contained in under three hours, Los Angeles fire officials said. No injuries were reported.
Target shooting may have sparked blaze
Meanwhile, near Yosemite National Park, the wildfire led officials to order the evacuations of 195 homes under immediate threat. About 2,000 homes faced at least some danger from the fast-spreading flames, fire officials said. No injuries were reported.
State fire spokeswoman Karen Guillemin said the blaze was sparked by someone target shooting but would not elaborate.
Most of the evacuated homes are in the town of Midpines, about 12 miles from the park. The southern edge of the blaze was as little as two miles from Mariposa, a town of about 1,800 residents, Berlant said.
Mary Ann Porter, a nursing assistant who lives in Midpines, left her goats, chickens and dog when she evacuated Sunday morning. Porter, who lives with her daughter and grandchildren, said the family took pictures and some computer hard drives.
"One of the blessings of living up here is that you adapt and learn to accept things," she said, sitting a table reading a newspaper in the evacuation center in Mariposa.
Some homeowners defied evacuation orders to stay and defend their properties.
"My house is about 100 yards from some fire right now and that's freaking me out," said John Romero, who answered his phone during a break from digging trenches and clearing brush with a little tractor.
Electricity to area cut
To protect firefighters battling flames beneath power lines, electricity was cut to a wide area, fire officials said. The transmission line that fed power to Yosemite was also destroyed in the fire, said James Guidi Jr., a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric.
Some park buildings were closed because of the power outage, but generators were still providing hotels, stores and other heavily used park facilities with electricity, park spokeswoman Julie Chavez said.
Mobile generators were being set up to restore power to the whole park and about 500 customers nearby by Monday evening. In all, about 1,000 customers had lost power, Guidi said.
Authorities reported the death of a second firefighter in as many days.
A firefighter believed to be a fire chief from Washington state died Saturday while scouting a blaze in Northern California, Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Susan Gravenkamp said Sunday.
The 250-acre fire had prevented crews from recovering the body to make a positive identification, but several other firefighters identified the victim as Daniel Packer, 49, of Lake Tapps, Wash., Gravenkamp said.
Packer was the immediate past president of the Washington Fire Chiefs Association, according to Brian Schaeffer, assistant fire chief in Spokane, Wash.
On Friday, Washington state firefighter Andrew Palmer, 18, died after he was hit by a falling tree while battling another Northern California wildfire.
In south-central Montana, about 100 homes were ordered to evacuate due to a wildfire west of Red Lodge.
The fire in the Custer National Forest had grown to 3,580 acres by Sunday and burned five summer homes in the historic Camp Senia area, said Forest Service fire information officer Jeff Gildehaus.
At the Red Lodge Mountain Ski Resort, employees stood by, ready to turn on snowmaking equipment to send cascades of water against the fast-moving fire, Gildehaus said.