At least eight people have been killed and some 3,300 structures have been destroyed over the past three weeks in wildfires across the state.

Firefighter Ricardo Gomez, of a San Benito Monterey Cal Fire crew, sets a controlled burn with a drip torch while fighting the Creek Fire, Sunday, Septeber 6, 2020, in Shaver Lake, California.
Firefighter Ricardo Gomez, of a San Benito Monterey Cal Fire crew, sets a controlled burn with a drip torch while fighting the Creek Fire, Sunday, Septeber 6, 2020, in Shaver Lake, California.
(AP)
More than 200 people have been airlifted to
safety overnight after a fast-moving wildfire cut off the only
road out of the Mammoth Pool Reservoir, a popular recreational
site in California's Sierra National Forest.
Twenty evacuees were taken to hospitals, the Madera County
Sheriff's Department said on Twitter on Sunday, as the Creek
Fire that started on Friday night rapidly grew to burn some
18,210 hectares or 182 square kilometres, forcing evacuations and road
closures in the Fresno area in central California.
"We're completely trapped. There’s fire on all sides, all
around us," said Jeremy Remington, as he stood on a beach
surrounded by fire in the Mammoth Pool Reservoir in a video
posted on Twitter. Remington was later airlifted to safety,
local news reported.

The blaze was 0% contained on Sunday afternoon, while nearly
15,000 firefighters were battling some two dozen fires across
the state, according to the California Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection (CalFire).
Eight people have been killed and some 3,300 structures have
been destroyed over the past three weeks in wildfires across the
state.
Three major fires, including the Creek Fire, were burning in
Fresno, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, the agency said
in a statement, adding it had increased staffing in preparation
for "critical fire weather."
The San Diego County Sheriff's Department issued a voluntary
evacuation order on Sunday afternoon as the 5,350-square acre
Valley Fire raged unchecked on the eastern edge of the
metropolitan area of more than 3 million people.
"The sky is so thick by my house; the sky is a dirty brown
cloud and I live about 25 minutes to the west of the fire,"
Twitter user Cris Mel said in a post. "It’s kind of a struggle
to breathe."
A dangerous heat wave was baking swaths of the western
United States through the weekend, and many locations in
California registered record-high temperatures on Sunday.
The temperature reached 49 C (121 degrees F) on Sunday
afternoon in Los Angeles County, a record for the National
Weather Service office that covers the metropolitan area.
"This is a historic heat wave for southwestern CA and one
that will be remembered for a long time," the service said in a
statement.
State officials on Sunday repeated calls to Californians to
turn off appliances and lights to help avoid blackouts from an
overwhelmed power grid.
Southern California Edison Co (SCE), which
services 5 million customer accounts in the region, was advising
customers of potential rotating outages between 4 p.m. and 9
p.m. on Sunday.
Rotating outages — in which utilities purposely cut power
temporarily to avoid broader outages — are rare. They last
occurred in the region in August. Before that, they had not
occurred in 20 years, said SCE spokesmen Reggie Kumar.Source: trtworld.com