LAKEPORT, Calif. -- Firefighters reported progress Tuesday in their battle against the wildfires that have ravaged some of Northern California's most scenic areas, including two blazes that were tearing through vineyards and brush-covered hills and threatening about 10,000 homes.
The two fires straddling Mendocino and Lake counties had burned 10 homes along 117 square miles of rural land. Crews were able to slow the spread of one of the fires into populated areas, and instead the flames pushed into Mendocino National Forest.
"Just because you see a big column [of smoke] standing up every day does not mean we're not having some success in the fire line," John Messina, battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said at a community meeting in Lake County.
He urged people to stay vigilant because fires can easily jump over containment lines.
Evacuation orders were in effect for the 4,700-resident town of Lakeport, along with some smaller communities and a section of the national forest. In all, about 19,000 people have been warned to flee, fire officials said.
Lakeport, north of San Francisco, is the county seat and a popular destination for bass anglers and boaters on the shores of Clear Lake. But by Monday night it was a ghost town, with the main streets deserted.
A few miles away, embers, ash and smoke swirled through vineyards where at least one home had gone up in flames. Firefighters set blazes at the bottom of hills to burn up the tinder-dry brush before flames cresting the ridge tops could feed on it and surge downhill. A fleet of aircraft made continuous water and fire retardant drops, filling the air with the roar of their engines.
About 100 miles north, the Carr Fire has burned more than 880 homes and killed six people in and around Redding. The blaze has also destroyed 348 outbuildings and damaged 165 homes.
It is now the seventh-most-destructive wildfire in California history, fire officials said.
Bret Gouvea, an incident commander for the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said he was cautiously optimistic about progress made against the fire, the Record-Searchlight newspaper of Redding reported.
"We're turning the corner," he said, adding that he hates "saying those things [because] this thing has made me a liar so many times."
More than 27,000 people had been evacuated from their homes, although another 10,000 were allowed to return Monday as fire crews reinforced lines on the fire's western edge.
In total, 15 large blazes are burning across the state, and fire crews are stretched to the limit.
Firefighters on Tuesday found themselves facing a new wildfire in a ranching and farming area near Covelo, about 180 miles north of San Francisco. Winds quickly drove it through about a square mile of brush and grasslands, oak, pine and timber near Mendocino National Forest, Mendocino County Undersheriff Matthew Kendall said.
Firefighting aircraft were called in, but it was unclear when they would arrive because many aircraft already were engaged in other fires, Kendall said.
Information for this article was contributed by Lorin Eleni Gill and Olga R. Rodriguez of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/01/2018