Some evacuated residents in northern California will be allowed to return home briefly to salvage items from burned homes as firefighters gain ground

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The Obama administration is asking Congress to change the way the federal government spends money to fight wildfires, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday.

Earnest’s statements came as authorities lifted some evacuation orders for some of people in northern California, where up to 23,000 people had been displaced since the weekend. One woman died, and several other people are still missing, authorities said.

A group of evacuees whose homes were lost in the inferno were due to be escorted back to their neighborhoods for a brief chance to collect any belongings they were able to salvage from the ruins of their destroyed dwellings, fire officials said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A driver makes a daring escape from burning woods. Link to video

Authorities said conditions in fire-ravaged areas remained too unsafe, with downed power lines and other hazards, to allow people whose homes remained intact to re-occupy their houses for another couple of days.



The residents will be allowed to go into their homes and yards for 15 minutes to feed and give water to animals.



Will Irons was headed to his home that is stilling standing in Hidden Valley with his two dogs that escaped the fire with him.



But he had to leave two cats, some chickens and a hamster behind. He is hopeful they are still alive.

Several horse trailers also are waiting outside the fire lines in Lower Lake to transport animals that may need refuge.



An estimated 13,000 residents remained displaced by evacuations, while the blaze, dubbed the Valley Fire, still posed a potential threat to 9,000 buildings in the fire zone, roughly 50 miles (80 km) west of Sacramento, the state capital.



At the White House, Earnest said the White House sent a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday reiterating requests made in Obama’s earlier budgets that the US revamp how it funds firefighting efforts.

Under the current funding system, Earnest said, the Forest Service and parts of the Interior Department are using money “that was originally dedicated to preventing forest fires to actually fight the forest fires”.



Earnest said that’s a flawed strategy because when less money is devoted to wildfire prevention, it means more will have to be spent on firefighting.



He said on Tuesday that the White House has asked Congress to change the funding system so programs that go toward preventing wildfires can be protected, while making sure there are sufficient resources to assist state and local firefighters who are trying to protect lives and property.



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Evacuated residents recounted chaotic ordeals of having to flee their homes through gauntlets of flame.

“That whole place was ablaze. It was like Armageddon,” said Steve Johnson, a 37-year-old construction worker from southern California who was visiting his mother in the fire-ravaged community of Hidden Valley Lake. “We were literally driving through the flames.”

Johnson and his mother safely escaped and spent Sunday night at a high school gymnasium converted into an evacuation center.

By Monday evening, the blaze had blackened 62,000 acres (24,690 hectares) of tinder-dry forests, brush and grasslands, and was only about 10 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man sits on a cot in an evacuation center at the Napa Valley Fairgrounds in Calistoga, California, on Sunday. Photograph: JL Sousa/AP

About 40,000 acres (16,190 hectares) of the landscape were consumed in the first 12 hours of the fire at the peak of its intensity on Saturday and early Sunday, stoked by high winds.

Fire officials described the rapid initial rate of spread as nearly unprecedented, a consequence of vegetation desiccated by four years of drought and weeks of extreme summer heat.

Four firefighters were hospitalized with second-degree burns in the early hours of the blaze on Saturday.

By Monday night more than 1,400 firefighters were battling the flames, one of 12 major wildfires across the state during an intense fire season.



The communities of Cobb, Middletown, Hidden Valley Lake and the Harbin Hot Springs resort – located about 50 miles (80 km) west of Sacramento, the state capital – were reported to be hardest hit by the fire.



Reuters video footage from Middletown, a village of about 1,500 residents, showed a smoking, devastated scene of burned-out vehicles, twisted, blackened debris and charred foundations of buildings that had been reduced to ash. Roughly half of the town was leveled.

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The carcass of a horse was seen lying on the shoulder of the road between Cobb and Middletown, a stretch of highway where miles of houses were laid to waste on both sides.

“We were trying to get out. We were trying to hook up our trailer and all of a sudden, two houses up I see this big wall of pink and red and gray,” said Carol Ulrich of Middletown. “So we just dropped everything and left. I didn’t even get my purse, nothing. We just drove away and left our trailer and everything.”

Janet Mondragon of Middletown appeared close to tears as she watched videotaped footage of her home in flames.

“We have nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said. “What can I tell you? We are staying in a hotel in Santa Rosa, but we’re going to have to start life over. There is nothing, absolutely nothing.”