Raging California wildfire grows bigger than city of Los Angeles

WASHINGTON: The largest wildfire in the US swelled to nearly 600 square miles on Tuesday morning, bigger than the city of Los Angeles, fire officials in California said, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a remote wilderness area north of Sacramento.

More than 5,000 firefighters from across California and other states were working around the clock to douse the Park Fire, burning in the state’s Central Valley, about 145-km north of Sacramento, the capital. The fire grew to 383,600 acres, becoming the sixth largest wildfire in Californian history.

The fire - fueled by dry grass, brush and timber - is fast-moving, said Fire Capt. Dan Collins of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or Cal Fire.

“This fire has lots of fuel that is receptive to burning, and it’s hard to get to,” he said. “Our fire line is 260 miles around, that’s the size of three Lake Tahoes. It can take two-three hours to get personnel in there over the terrain.”

The weather brings only a slight chance of a stray thunderstorm on Tuesday, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. After that, no rain is in sight, and hot and extremely dry will prevail, he said. Temperatures will reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday and highs could hover at that level until next Monday, he said, with relative humidity dropping to as low as 7 percent.