More than 14,000 people have been evacuated from a northern California town as hundreds of out of control wildfires continued to burn across the state, officials said Wednesday.
Wind-driven flames leapt over fire lines at a rural community near the town of Paradise, 90 miles (144 kilometers) north of Sacramento and destroyed nearly 40 homes in the space of a few hours early Tuesday, emergency services said.
Chuck Rough, director of the emergency operations center in Paradise, told CNN that although conditions eased overnight, firecrews battling the 49,000-acre (19,800-hectare) blaze in Butte County were bracing for a heatwave.
"We're holding our breath literally and figuratively today," Rough told CNN.
So far 14,000 of the 27,000 people in Paradise have been evacuated, Rough said. Forty homes and 10 outbuildings have been destroyed near the town so far.
The blaze is one of 323 fires burning across California, part of a firestorm of nearly 1,800 infernos that have erupted since June 20, when lightning from dry thunderstorm set light to tinder-dry parkland.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said 1,458 fires had now been fully contained, while 18,900 personnel were deployed across the state battling the fires still alight.
So far 675,631 acres have burnt, making the crisis one of the largest firestorms in California history, although there have been no direct fatalities and a relatively small number of homes -- 96 -- have been razed.
Wildfires in California last October scorched around 500,000 acres, left eight people dead, destroyed 2,000 homes and displaced around 640,000 people.
California Senator Diane Feinstein on Wednesday requested 910 million dollars in emergency federal funding for fire suppression, describing the situation in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee as "explosive."
"Excessive-heat warnings have been issued, more dry-lightning strikes are expected, our resources are stretched to breaking point and the state remains tinder-dry," Feinstein said.
The two focal points of the most recent crisis are separate fires burning in the Los Padres National Forest near the town of Santa Barbara and the tourist haven of Big Sur.
According to figures Wednesday, the 9,710-acre fire near Santa Barbara, 103 miles (165 kilometers), north of Los Angeles was 55 percent contained while the 85,717-acre fire near Big Sur, 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of San Francisco, was 27 percent contained.
A spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said progress had been made against fires on Tuesday but crews remained on alert for a sudden shift in conditions.
"We've got a lot of structure-protection crews just waiting," Captain Eli Iskow told the Los Angeles Times. "We've got a hot day ahead of us and need to stop the fire tucked away in the canyon."
