A giant wildfire raging out of control spread into Yosemite National Park on Friday as authorities urged more evacuations in nearby communities where thousands have already been forced out by flames marching through the timbered slopes of the western Sierra Nevada.
The fire has hit the park — whose streams and lakes, grandeur and granite peaks attract millions of people from all over the world — at the height of summer season, just a week before the Labor Day holiday.
The blaze has closed backcountry hiking in the park, but was not threatening the Yosemite Valley region, one of California’s most popular tourist destinations.
The fire grew to more than 165 square miles and was only 2 percent contained. It continued to spread in several directions, although “most of the fire activity is pushing to the east right into Yosemite,” said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Smoke blowing across the Sierra into the state of Nevada forced officials in several counties to cancel outdoor school activities and issue health advisories, especially for people with respiratory problems.
The fire was threatening about 4,500 residences, U.S. Forest Service officials said. The blaze has destroyed four homes and 12 outbuildings in several different areas. More than 2,000 firefighters were on the lines and one suffered a heat-related injury.
While the park remained open, the blaze closed a 4-mile stretch of State Route 120, one of three entrances into Yosemite on the west side. Two other western routes and an eastern route were open.
Within the park, the blaze was burning on about 17 square miles in a remote area around Lake Eleanor, about 4 miles northwest of Hetch Hetchy reservoir, Yosemite spokeswoman Kari Cobb said.
Backcountry permits are required to hike in that area, Cobb said, and the park was no longer issuing those and had contacted every person who had received a permit to go there. Two roads into that area were closed and occupants of a campground near the Route 120 west entrance were relocated.
“We don’t have anybody we know of in that area based on the permits we have out now,” she said.
The fire was more than 20 miles from Yosemite Valley and skies there were “crystal clear,” Cobb said.
“Right now there are no closures and no visitor services are being affected in the park,” Cobb said. “We just have to take one day at a time depending on fire activity.”
Officials also have advised voluntary evacuations of more than a thousand other homes, several organized camps and at least two campgrounds in the area outside the park’s boundary.
On Friday, officials issued voluntary evacuation advisories for two new towns — Tuolumne City, population 1,800, and Ponderosa Hills, a community of several hundred — which are about five miles from the fire line, Forest Service spokesman Jerry Snyder said. And a mandatory evacuation order remained in effect for part of Pine Mountain Lake, a summer gated community that’s a few miles from the fire.
More homes, businesses and hotels are threatened in nearby Groveland, a community of 600 about 5 miles from the fire and 25 miles from the entrance of Yosemite.
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