About 200 people were rescued by helicopter on Saturday night into Sunday morning after a fast-growing wildfire trapped them at a reservoir in the Sierra National Forest in California, the authorities said.
Dozens of evacuees were packed in military helicopters: Two UH-60 Black Hawks and a CH-47 Chinook helicopter were used to help in the rescues and fly those who had been trapped at the Mammoth Pool Reservoir to Fresno Yosemite International Airport, said Brad Alexander, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
About 20 people were injured, he said, and some were taken to area hospitals. Two people stayed behind, refusing to be evacuated, the Madera County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter on Sunday. The evacuations were complete, it said.
“We’re all in awe of the California National Guard pilots who were able to land and evacuate citizens during a fire storm like that,” the sheriff, Tyson Pogue, said.
Earlier, the Fresno Fire Department offered a different assessment on Twitter: It said 63 people had been rescued, with two severely injured, 10 moderately injured and 51 others with minor or no injuries.
The conditions of those injured or hospitalized were not immediately available.
California’s emergency services office coordinated mutual aid from the state’s National Guard and Naval Air Station Lemoore after the Madera County sheriff asked for help, Mr. Alexander said. Visibility was a significant challenge for pilots throughout the rescue, Mr. Alexander said.
The sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook late Saturday that about 150 people had been sheltering at the Mammoth Pool Boat Launch.
The Mammoth Pool Reservoir, which is about 80 miles from Fresno, is “very remote and accessible by one two-lane road,” said Sarah Jackson, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.
“When that road is blocked, it becomes very difficult to come and go, let alone in an emergency-type situation,” she said.
The area is heavily forested and as a result “you can assume there are burned and living trees” cutting off the only exit, she said.
“It’s either fire or trees blocking the road,” she said, adding that the authorities had asked people to avoid the area.
Mr. Alexander said the road was cut off because of the direction of the fire and was no longer accessible because of the intensity of the heat as well as smoke, damage, threat of debris and fallen trees.
The Creek Fire, which has grown to at least 45,000 acres, began on Friday just as the holiday weekend was getting started, according to officials.
The wildfire, which started near the communities of Big Creek and Huntington Lake, prompted several evacuations in Big Creek, Huntington Lake, Shaver Lake and the Cascadel Woods, the United States Forest Service said Sunday.
After the fire crossed the San Joaquin River and was headed to the Mammoth Pool, some people sought to shelter in place near Wagner’s Store and Campground, officials said.
Just north of the store, Teddy Forscher and four friends abandoned their campsite after they were ordered to evacuate. They went on a hike at 11 a.m. on Saturday and noticed an “orange glow” in the sky, he said.
Driving back to the campsite after the hike, a Forest Service employee told them to evacuate. Mr. Forscher said the group had considered stopping at the campground to gather their equipment and two other cars, but moved on in one vehicle.
“The fire looked very close to where we were,” he said. “It just didn’t seem worth it.”
Carrie Lightfoot, a resident of Bass Lake, which is a few miles west of the Mammoth Pool area, left her home on Sunday morning.
After working a night shift, she woke up on Saturday afternoon to a “completely dark sky.” On Sunday morning, she said “it looks like it’s 8:30 at night.”
Speaking on the phone as she overlooked Bass Lake, Ms. Lightfoot said, “You can taste the smoke.”
“You can see red coming up the mountain” near the lake, she said. “It just looks like the end of the world.”
Shannon O’Brien of North Forks, Calif., said on Sunday morning that it was dark outside her home, a few miles west of the fire, even during the daylight.
She said large pieces of ash were “snowing” onto her home, where she put a lawn sprinkler on the roof.
About 800 personnel from several state and local agencies were challenged by steep, rugged terrain, heavy fuel loading and high temperatures, the authorities said.
California is still reeling from a heat wave last month that exacerbated a series of devastating wildfires, including the second- and third-largest fires in the state’s history.
Forecasters predicted brutally hot and dry weather across much of the Western United States over the Labor Day weekend, including in California.
On Saturday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning until Sunday afternoon, signaling an increased risk of fire for the coastal mountain slopes and inland valleys of San Diego and Riverside Counties. A red flag warning was also in effect until Monday night for the Santa Barbara County mountains and the South Coast.
Aimee Ortiz contributed reporting.
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