Fires rage in Californiya. Fires sweep southern California
Channel: news all the world
Date: 2014-05-15

FIREFIGHTERS are scrambling to control multiple blazes in southern California on the second day of a sweltering heatwave.
San Diego County officials say there are nine wildfires burning in the region covering more than 36 square kilometres.
At a press conference today, fire and emergency officials said the greatest concern is now in the city of San Marcos north of San Diego, where a new blaze broke out in the late afternoon and some 21,000 evacuation notices have been sent to residents.
The campus of California State University, San Marcos, a school of nearly 10,000 students was evacuated, with school buses taking those who were on campus to evacuation centers.
Firefighters were faring well against other blazes, with evacuations canceled around fires east of San Diego in Lakeside and to the north at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
One fire prompted the partial evacuation of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, the Los Angeles Times is reporting.
About a dozen non-essential staff were evacuated, the power plant's management tweeted. The plant is due for closure but has not yet been shut down.
Another fire has claimed 30 houses but no fatalities in the small coastal city of Carlsbad, about 48 kilometres north of San Diego.
The blazes, which also closed a major north-south highway, come amid record temperatures in the western US state, where the annual wildfire season typically starts much later in the year.
At least 15 buildings have been destroyed, including three homes, said Michael Davis, fire chief in Carlsbad.
"At times it looks like there's fire in the sky with the wind whipping back and forth," eyewitness Ryan Marble, waiting in a long line at a gas station to get fuel to evacuate, told The Los Angeles Times newspaper.State fire Capt. Mike Moehler told KCAL-TV that all of the homes were in the same neighbourhood and engines were being called in from across the region to help.
The blaze was one of several wildfires that firefighters in San Diego County were battling amid hot, dry and windy conditions.Offshore wind means some coastal communities have higher temperatures than inland and coupled with low humidities, "it's just, unfortunately, a recipe for a large fire and that's what we're seeing right now," Moehler said.
In Carlsbad, fires burned homes, downed power lines and forced evacuations of homeowners, as well as schoolchildren and tourists at the Legoland amusement park.