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2008 Summer California Wildfires
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Recently, I returned from fighting wildfires in Northern California. I have been in the Mt. Shasta area and Chester, CA for the past three weeks (Peterson Complex, Cub Fire, and Onion Fire). Temperatures were hot, often above 100 degrees and the relative humidity in some areas was in the low teens.
On my bus ride back up to Oregon as we were driving through Redding, the hills were releasing smoke on the west side of I-5. I found an article about this, Blaze rushes through hills west of Redding (http://www.redding.com/news/2008/jul/12/no-headline—a1fires12/)
As the burgeoning fire swept through the hills west of Redding, Highway 299 was shut down and mandatory evacuations were issued in the French Gulch area. An advisory evacuation order was announced for some residents in the historic town of Shasta.
From an article from the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/13/america/12wildfire.php),
Hundreds of wildfires have blackened nearly 1,200 square miles, or 3,100 square kilometers, and destroyed about 100 homes across California since a rare lightning storm ignited most of them three weeks ago.
Officials say more fires have been burning at one time this year than during any other period in recorded California history.
“This is truly a national disaster. The magnitude is incredible,” said Daniel Berlant, a state fire agency spokesman.
Jason Kirchner, a spokesman for U.S. Forest Service, said firefighters had spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the blazes.
About 20,000 firefighters from 41 states and Puerto Rico were fighting more than 320 active fires around the state, and more were on the way from Mexico, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered 2,400 members of the National Guard to join the fire crews on the ground, the first time for the first time in more than 30 years.
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