California’s sustained drought continued to take its toll Wednesday as wildfires chewed through parched trees and vegetation from Shasta to San Bernardino counties.
The spread of the Lake fire burning in the San Bernardino National Forest slowed, the U.S. Forest Service reported. The blaze has burned 17,555 acres and is 38% contained.
It started a week ago south of Highway 38 and has kept a large stretch of the road closed through the mountains as flames crawled through terrain inaccessible by foot. Firefighters have had to rely on helicopters dropping flame retardant for some swaths of forest as they built defenses to cut off the fire’s path.