Fire threat diminishes but fight continues in California

AVALON, Calif. – Cooler weather aided firefighters Saturday as they battled to surround a 4,200-acre wildfire in the rugged, unpopulated interior of Santa Catalina Island while the resort’s main town returned to life as the blaze’s threat eased.\nThe fire was about two-thirds contained and was expected to be encircled by Tuesday evening, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Andrew Olverasaid. One home and six businesses burned Thursday but no one had been seriously injured.\nNearly 4,000 evacuated residents had started returning to the island, where damage was estimated at $2.1 million.\n“We have a sense of duty to the town to bring it back to normal,” delicatessen owner Rick Miller said as he unloaded supplies from his van. “People get hungry and it doesn’t hurt to see businesses open and calm restored.”\nFog and highs only in the 60s diminished the threat of the fire spreading. It was isolated in the back country of the 76-square-mile island, more than 20 miles off the Southern California coast.\nThe fire appeared to have been ignited by contractors working on antennas at a radio station in the island’s interior, Avalon Fire Chief Steven Hoefs said.\nBill Agresta, chief engineer at station KBRT-AM, said three contractors had been cutting steel antenna cable with a gas-powered circular saw Thursday when the fire ignited.\nAgresta said he saw a small blaze and ran inside the station to call 911. By the time he returned, it had moved several hundred feet downhill and engulfed the contractors’ tool truck.\nElsewhere, smoke from a mammoth wildfire in the Southeast closed sections of two major highways Saturday. Crews were still battling a wildfire in Georgia and northern Florida that had burned 212,000 acres, or more than 330 square miles, since lightning ignited it a week ago.\nFlorida officials closed a 35-mile stretch of Interstate 75 from the Georgia-Florida state line to Lake City, Fla., as well as a 40-mile stretch of I-10 Saturday morning because of near-zero visibility from smoke.\nSeveral accidents had occurred on the two highways, emergency management officials said.\nThe fire, which started in the middle of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, took just six days to grow larger than a separate wildfire that had burned 124,000 acres of Georgia forest and swampland in more than three weeks.\nIn Georgia, the fire posed a threat to the town of Fargo, where 380 people live about eight miles west of the Okefenokee Swamp. Occupants of about 15 homes were urged to leave as a precaution because of the smoke and ash.\nAbout 600 residents evacuated late Thursday from about 160 homes in north Florida were still unable to return home Saturday, said Jim Harrell of the Florida Division of Forestry.\nNear the Canadian border, some evacuation orders were lifted in northeastern Minnesota, where a wilderness wildfire had blackened about 85 square miles of forest. However, an evacuation order was expanded across the border in Canada because of concerns about shifting wind, said Ministry of Natural Resources spokeswoman Leona Tarini.\nDozens of houses and cabins have been burned, and about 300 people had checked in at an evacuation center.