'More than 10,000 people have been ordered to evacuate'

FRANCE 24 English

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00:00More than 10,000 people have been ordered to evacuate as fierce winds blew flames into

00:06ranches and neighborhoods northwest of Los Angeles.

00:10Dozens of homes were already lost to the fast-moving wildfire.

00:14Some set ablaze by embers blown as far as three kilometers from the fire front.

00:20Fueled by abundant grass and scrub, the blaze had burned over 20,000 acres by Thursday evening.

00:27To date, we've evacuated over 400 homes, 250 residents choosing to stay and protect

00:32their homes, and there were 800 homes where no one was home, so assuming they had either

00:37left before we arrived, were at work, or otherwise out of town.

00:41The cause of the fire has not been deduced, but meteorologists had raised a red flag warning

00:47in the area, indicating dangerous fire conditions.

00:51They said two years of above-average rainfall had sparked abundant growth of vegetation,

00:57which was now all bone-dry after a long, hot summer.

01:00Seasonal Santa Ana winds from California's desert interior had brought gusts at one point

01:06as high as 130 kilometers per hour, worsening the situation in a region already prone to

01:13fires.

01:14This whole area is basically designed to burn all the way to the ocean, so unfortunately

01:20there's people in between here in the ocean, so scary, always scary every year.

01:26California relies on inmates from its prison system to make up as much as 30 percent of

01:31its wildfire fighting force, paying them as little as $6 per day.

01:36But California now faces a firefighter shortage, as it has increasingly released prisoners

01:41convicted of non-violent offenses or drug possession.

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