Fires Rage Near Yosemite and Salinas

Brush fires swept across scattered locations in California over the weekend, the largest in Tuolumne County where 2,000 firefighters battled an out-of-control blaze in steep terrain, officials said.

By late Sunday, the Tuolumne County blaze had burned 4,500 acres of brush, grass and timber-- dried from six years of drought--and prompted the evacuation of 2,000 residents from two communities.

“They’re getting a better handle on it,” said Kary Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Forestry. “It’s 45% contained.”

Residents were evacuated from the communities of Mocassin and Big Oak Flat, but the Mocassin residents have been allowed to return, she said.

The fire burned in picturesque country only four miles from Stanislaus National Forest and 20 miles outside of Yosemite National Park.

The blaze apparently was started by a campfire that got out of control Saturday near Don Pedro Lake in the Moccasin Point campground area, where temperatures hovered Saturday afternoon near the 100-degree mark, said Ross Jones, a Tuolumne County fire investigator. Whipped by gusty winds Saturday, the fast-moving fire burned 1,000 acres in an hour.

No injures were reported, but a barn was destroyed and hundreds of homes were threatened, fire officials said.

The fire also damaged wood supports used on a maintenance project at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, San Francisco’s main source of water.

Hetch Hetchy spokesman Ken Cooper said Sunday that the supports “burned in some areas but in no way compromised the pipes.”

In Monterey County near Salinas, a wildfire stoked by hot, dry air swept through the Ventana Wilderness on Sunday, where rugged terrain and a ban on power equipment hampered firefighters.

The blaze began late Saturday in the Arroyo Seco recreational area and had blackened more than 1,600 acres by Sunday afternoon, said Rosie Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Department of Forestry.

Rivera said temperatures well into the 90s and low humidity helped speed the fire through the wilderness area 35 miles south of Salinas.

About 400 firefighters had managed to keep the fire from moving north toward structures, but failed to stop its spread south from the Los Padres National Forest into the Ventana Wilderness.

One firefighter was treated and released at a hospital. There were no other injuries reported, Stacy said.

In Southern California, lightning strikes Sunday ignited brush in high desert communities of San Bernardino County, but firefighters managed to keep the wildfires to less than 15 acres.

At least three fires were reported in the Mojave Desert area 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles--two in the community of Hesperia, where the largest blackened 15 acres, and one in neighboring Apple Valley.