SACRAMENTO, California: Over the weekend, Californian firefighters, successfully battled a wind-driven wildfire 60 miles east of San Francisco that torched thousands of acres, completely gutted a home, and compelled residents near the central California city of Tracy to flee.
Nearly 100,000 residents of Tracy City, about 70 miles south of California’s capital, Sacramento, and thousands living around the place were evacuated to centers over the weekend. However, they were back home the next day as the order was lifted.
The grassy hills managed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a critical nuclear weapons science and technology center in the country, mysteriously caught fire. While the blaze, dubbed the Corral Fire, did not threaten the center, it consumed some 22 square miles by the afternoon of June 2.
A fire safety official said two firefighters suffered minor to moderate burns and were expected to recover fully.
An evacuation order had been issued a day earlier for areas west of the California Aqueduct, south of Corral Hollow Creek, west to Alameda County and south to Stanislaus County by the San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services. County residents were told to boil the water coming in the taps and use only bottled water for drinking.
By June 2, two major highways, including an interstate connecting the San Francisco Bay Area to San Joaquin County in central California, which had been closed because of the wildfire, reopened in the afternoon.
Temperatures in San Joaquin Valley, an area near Tracy, were expected to climb from 103 F to 108 F (39.4 C to 42.2 C) later in the week.
