A pyrotechnic device used at a gender reveal party sparked a fire that roared through thousands of acres while hundreds of residents near another blaze were airlifted …
A pyrotechnic device used at a gender reveal party sparked a fire that roared through thousands of acres while hundreds of residents near another blaze were airlifted to safety as wildfires continued to tear through wide swaths of California on Monday. Record-breaking heat added fuel to the flames and put a strain on the electrical grid, although fears of widespread outages had not materialized. Still about 50,000 homes and businesses were dark Monday morning. The El Dorado Fire near Yucaipa began burning Saturday, and authorities said the culprit was a device sometimes used to release blue or pink smoke to announce the gender of an expected baby. The fire,70 miles east of Los Angeles, had burned more than 7,000 acres and was 5% contained. Temperatures in the fire zone were in the 90s while downtown Los Angeles reached 111 degrees. A record-shattering high of 121 degrees was recorded in the nearby Woodland Hills neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley.
