Crews gain ground on monster California wildfire

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Crews battling the largest wildfire in California’s history took advantage of milder overnight temperatures to gain considerable ground in containing the blaze on Wednesday, a day after officials said it would take until September to snuff it out.

The Mendocino Complex fire, which has scorched an area of northern California almost the size of Los Angeles, was 47 percent contained on Wednesday morning, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said, up from 34 percent a day earlier.

So far, two firefighters have been injured fighting the blaze, which has consumed more than 300,000 acres. While sprawling, the wildfire was less destructive than last week’s Carr Fire near Redding, which burned 75 homes to the ground, forced the evacuation of more than 23,000 people and destroyed more than 1,000 structures.

Overnight temperatures for Wednesday and Thursday should drop to a low of 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 Celsius) but highs were forecast to hit 98 degrees (37 Celsius) on Wednesday and 99 degrees on Thursday, said Jennifer Guenehner of the National Weather Service.

Some 4,000 firefighters were working to stop the fire from reaching communities at the southern tip of the Mendocino National Forest, about 100 miles (161 km) north of San Francisco. The blaze is still threatening more than 10,000 structures, according to Cal Fire.

The Mendocino Complex is one of 17 major fires burning in California that have destroyed more than 1,500 structures and displaced tens of thousands of people.

Cal Fire on Tuesday pushed back the date when it expected to bring the Mendocino fire under full control to Sept. 1, the fourth time the department has revised its timetable as the massive wildfire expanded.

The blaze became the largest in California history on Monday, after officials began battling two separate blazes in the Mendocino area as a single event.

The blaze, which scorched more than 300,000 acres, has surpassed the Thomas Fire, which burned 281,893 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in southern California last December.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Wednesday directed federal agencies to use any water that was needed to “protect life and property” threatened by California wildfires.

In a written statement Ross said he had directed the National Marine Fisheries Service to facilitate access to the water needed to fight the fires.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump claimed, without substantiating his remarks, that California was letting water run into the ocean instead of using it to fight the flames, and blamed California’s environmental policies for worsening the fires.

The comments baffled California firefighters, who said they had more than enough water to douse the flames.

The California fires are on track to be the most destructive in a decade, prompting Democratic Governor Jerry Brown and Republican leaders such as state Senator Ted Gaines to call for thinning forests and controlled burns to reduce fire danger.