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LOWER LAKE, Calif. (AP) — Wildfires are raging in forests and woodlands across California and an army of firefighters continues to battle them from the air and the ground. Hundreds of people have been forced to flee their homes.
A spokesman for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says 23 large fires, many sparked by lightning strikes, are burning across Northern California. And some 8,000 firefighters are attempting to subdue them, something made incredibly difficult by several years of drought.
In the Modoc National Forest, about a hundred miles south of Oregon, A firefighter from South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest was killed fighting a fast-moving blaze.
The biggest fire is in the Lower Lake area north of San Francisco where firefighters have been turning loose horses, goats and other livestock in rural neighborhoods as their owners fled to safety. The fast-moving fire has burned three homes and is threatening 450 other structures. Only 5 percent contained, it has spread across 28 square miles and is growing quickly.
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