A major fire ravaging an area on the outskirts of Los Angeles, California in the United States, has doubled in size in less than 24 hours, firefighters announced this Thursday, September 8, 2022, facing a sweltering heat wave in the western United States.
Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate the area threatened by the “Fairview fire”, which has now consumed more than 7,700 hectares of land.
Two dead in fire
“The fire is spreading to the east, south and in certain portions located north of the hearth of the fire”, indicated California Wildfire Services.
Two people have already been killed in the fire that broke out on Monday, in the midst of an extreme heat wave that has hit California for a week, as well as parts of Nevada and Arizona. With temperatures flirting with 45°C in some places, which jeopardize the Californian electricity grid.
Risk of power cuts
The network regulator, California ISO, narrowly avoided rotating power outages on Tuesday, September 6, 2022 (controlled and distributed over different areas).
He renewed his alert on Thursday to urge consumers to lower their electricity consumption between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m., two hours more than previous calls of this type, due to a “insufficient supply” scheduled for this slot.
“The state and much of the West are enduring a record-breaking and historically long heat wave, straining the grid due to high electricity consumption,” recalled the regulator.
According to the US weather services, the heat wave should begin to dissipate in the coming days, but California is not out of the woods yet.
