At least two people died Tuesday in California and thousands more were evacuated because of a new large fire in the Los Angeles area, currently subject to a heat wave. Another person was burned and was hospitalized.
Several buildings were also destroyed by the fire, which started Monday near the town of Hemet southeast of Los Angeles, and which has already ravaged more than 1,000 hectares in less than 24 hours. Nearby schools have been closed. Firefighters ordered residents of more than 3,000 homes to evacuate their homes.
The fire “spread very quickly even before the firefighters arrived on the scene”, explained a spokesperson for the firefighters on Twitter.
California faced, like certain regions of Nevada and Arizona, another day of extreme temperatures. A heat dome has settled over the region, pushing the mercury to soar up to 43 degrees Celsius in some places. The phenomenon should continue until Thursday.
Destabilized electrical network
Coupled with the devastating drought that has hit the American West for two decades, this brutal heat creates the ideal conditions for fires to start. Last week, another fire, dubbed ‘Route Fire’, had already destroyed several thousand hectares in the hinterland of Los Angeles.
This heat wave also causes disturbances on the Californian electricity network. Its regulator, California ISO, has issued several alerts to ask households to limit their consumption from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. in order to avoid saturation.
Californians are therefore asked to avoid recharging their electric vehicle during this time slot, not to set the air conditioning below 25.5 degrees and to refrain from using their main energy-consuming equipment.
In the middle of the day, all the solar panels generally provide one third of the electricity in California. But, at sunset, the supply of photovoltaic energy is abruptly interrupted, leaving the other sources of electricity to take over, which poses a problem at the start of the evening, when the heat of the day is not still falling, pushing demand via air conditioning.
Last week, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom temporarily lifted restrictions so fossil-fueled power plants might produce more.
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