Weary firefighters get no relief

In the battle against a 49,000-acre fire in Butte County, the weather took the fire's side Wednesday.

Exhausted firefighters felt it turning against them. The winds whipped up. The air grew hotter. Black smoke fouled the sky.

All day, they hoped for a moist and cool night to tilt the balance in their favor. But dusk brought no relief. There was no dew, none of the normal evening chill. Just more scorching heat and parched air -- strange weather that seemed determined to thwart them.

"We really don't need it right now," said Janet Upton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The Butte County blaze in Northern California surged to the forefront of statewide firefighting efforts Tuesday after flames there destroyed about 50 homes and forced about 10,000 residents to evacuate.

Elsewhere in the state, fire officials reported slow but steady progress. A vast blaze in the Big Sur area was still only 27% controlled, but firefighters were gaining against the fire near Goleta, which is at least 55% contained.

Since lightning bolts first ignited a drought-seared state June 20, California has seen more than 1,700 blazes destroy about 688,000 acres -- a combined acreage that's more than double the area of the city of Los Angeles.

Fire officials said about 12,800 residences remained under threat. In all, 99 homes have been lost. By late Wednesday, 322 fires still raged, and temperatures were projected to hit triple digits in some areas.

The threat to federal firefighting resources prompted U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday to seek $910 million in emergency federal funding for fire suppression and other fire-related needs.

"The situation in California is explosive," Feinstein wrote in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee. "Excessive-heat warnings have been issued, more dry-lightning strikes are expected, our resources are stretched to the breaking point, and the state remains tinder-dry."

The Butte County fire spreading through areas near Paradise, north of Sacramento, came within two miles of Paradise's Feather River Hospital. The staff scrambled to evacuate more than 40 patients.