A state of emergency was declared for El Dorado County, California late last night. Governor Jerry Brown said two wildfires now plaguing the state are now out of control, and asked for federal aid to help quench the flames.
One of the fires is dangerously close to Pollock Pines, a small town east of Sacramento. The fire is growing out of control, and if it is not brought to an end soon it could damage over 2,000 homes. Hundreds of people living in Pollock Pines received evacuation orders in case the flame spreads to them.
Just this morning, a 37-year old man was arrested for possible arson in conjunction with the fire. Officials have not released more information pertaining to the suspect, and are now refocusing on fighting the fires.
As of last night, over 2,500 firefighters were working as hard as they could to keep the fire under control, but it continued to grow "explosively."
Another fire in a town called Weed damaged over a hundred houses as it blazed across the town on Monday.
"It's been an explosive couple of days," Daniel Berlant, a spokesperson for the California Fire Department, said.
In the current out-of-control fire, there are indicators saying that there might be a higher chance of rain today, September 18, or at least a higher humidity in the area, which would aid firefighters.
The entire state of California is in an extremely bad drought, one of the worst ever recorded. The governor declared a previous state of emergency in January as a result. The state always gets some wildfires in the summer, but the drought is making it even worse this year. The dry air and land conditions also mean more wildfires are starting, and once they start it's hard to stop them.
The U.S. Forest Service does its best to keep forests safe from harm and conducts extensive research on wildfires. The Forest Service's fire safety plan is to focus on ecosystem restoration, community preparedness and wildfire response. The organization is even able to predict the movement of a wildfire to a certain degree of accuracy, studying wind movements and other things.
The Forest Service's Fire Science Lab is hard at work to learn more about how to protect firefighters. The team is currently trying to improve the accuracy with which fire safety zones are calculated. This is difficult and dangerous work and the team needs to study active fires to learn more. With luck, the devastating wildfires California now faces will allow them to learn more live-saving techniques.
