Weather ‘gift’ in fighting wildfire

CALIFORNIA’s firefighters got a gift of mild, mostly windless conditions yesterday as they attempted to protect thousands of homes from a huge wildfire, with their energy and resources taxed by more than 300 blazes still burning around the state.

“The firefighters are stretched thin, they are exhausted,” and some have gone days without sleep, said movie star Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who visited a command post in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County, where nearly 2,700 homes were threatened by a four-day-old fire in the Los Padres National Forest that has consumed about 21sq km.

Fires have burned more than 1,300sq km of land and destroyed at least 69 homes throughout California in the past two weeks. One firefighter died of a heart attack while digging fire lines.