ONE of the largest California wildfires on record roared deeper into Yosemite National Park as firefighters started winning the battle to contain it.
The so-called Rim Fire, which is burning mainly in the Stanislaus National Forest west of Yosemite, nearly doubled its footprint in the park yesterday and later crept closer to thousands of homes.
After advancing on a reservoir for several days, the flames reached the shores of a reservoir but the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission said in a statement there was "little risk for direct impacts" on the city's water supply because of the rocky terrain.
Meanwhile, a firefighting force of some 4100 personnel, backed by bulldozers and water-dropping helicopters, continued to make headway in their drive to encircle and suppress the flames.
Containment lines had been established around 20% of the fire's perimeter, though the overall area of the blaze continued to grow as much of the firefighting effort focused on structure protection.
The Rim Fire has charred nearly 184,500 acres - an area larger than the land mass of Chicago - since it erupted on August 17.
The blaze had scorched more than 40,000 acres of Yosemite, forcing the closure of some campgrounds in the more remote northern part of the park and the main entrance road from the direction of the San Francisco Bay area.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article