California’s Big Sur sees evacuation orders as Timber fire grows

Evacuations have been ordered for areas along California’s famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains.The Timber fire in Monterey county started Sunday and grew to more than 1,700 acres by Monday, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency.The evacuations included famed tourist destinations like Nepenthe restaurant, the Henry Miller Memorial Library and the Alila Ventana resort. Part of the Pacific Coast Highway was closed for non-residents.Firefighters worked to build containment lines along the Highway 1 corridor, CalFire said on Monday. Ground crews are working to access difficult terrain, Cal Fire said, but the fire is moving slowly, burning primarily along the ground through grass, brush, and oak woodland and has not moved into the tree tops.The cause of the fire is still under investigation.Firefighters are fighting blazes across the US west. Canada put its military on standby Monday to help battle deadly wildfires in British Columbia, where at least one woman has died and some 20,000 people have fled their homes.Nearly half of the fires in the region are burning out of control, according to authorities.The mayor of Summerland – home to about 12,000 people, which was ordered evacuated on Saturday night along with about 8,000 people in and around nearby Peachland – warned that the affected areas remained too dangerous to enter and that it was impossible to determine the scope of the destruction.Meanwhile, a quick-moving blaze just north of Reno, Nevada, forced about 5,500 people to evacuate.Firefighters in Spokane, Washington, strengthened containment lines around three destructive blazes in that state, allowing some evacuated residents to return home.And Oregon is experiencing its worst year on record for land burned by large wildfires, with 3,671 sq miles (9,508 sq km) scorched, said Northwest Interagency Coordination Center spokesperson Jean Nelson-Dean. That beats the state’s previous record set in 2024.