Fueled by extreme drought and a heat wave, a major fire has been raging in California since Monday. Two people are killed and thousands of houses have to be evacuated. Containment of the fire has been slow so far.
A rapidly spreading forest fire in the US state of California has claimed two lives - thousands of people are fleeing the flames. According to the fire department, another person was taken to the hospital with burn injuries. Accordingly, more than 3,000 houses were evacuated and schools were closed.
The so-called "Fairview" fire broke out on Monday near the town of Hemet, southeast of Los Angeles, and has already devastated more than 1,600 hectares of land. The fire "spread very quickly before the fire department could get there," a spokesman for the local fire department wrote on Twitter. Around 265 firefighters are fighting the flames. By Tuesday evening, however, only five percent of the fire had been contained.
The cause of the fire is not yet known. Southern California Edison electric utility reported "circuit activity" in the area at the time the fire broke out. The company had previously been fined heavily after it was found that its equipment had caused wildfires, some of them deadly, in California.
In California there is currently a heat wave with temperatures of up to 43 degrees, which is expected to last until Thursday. The western United States has been suffering from a devastating drought for two decades, which, combined with the heat, encourages wildfires. Just last week, a wildfire in upstate Los Angeles destroyed thousands of acres of land.
