California wildfire threatens thousands of homes

State of emergency: the pool of a Santa Barbara house destroyed by the wildfire. The blaze threatens 5,430 more homes
Sam Lyon12 April 2012

A wildfire burning for a third day in southern California has damaged or destroyed 75 homes and threatens thousands more.

The state's fire officials said that the blaze in Santa Barbara is only 10 per cent contained.

The wildfire, named Jesusita, has spread to 2,700 acres, or four square miles, battalion chief Mike Carr of the state's department of forestry and fire protection said.

The fire burned multi-million-dollar homes in the coastal city to their foundations and forced about 13,500 people to evacuate. About 5,430 homes were thought to be threatened.

It began as a brush fire on Wednesday when fierce winds of up to 5mph fanned the flames . About 1,400 fire crew were being aided by helicopters to tackle the fire.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency.

Mr Carr did not have a tally of how many homes have been destroyed, but officials estimate the number is in the dozens.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in