A U.S. wildfire burned through 11 homes outside an Oregon college town as hot and dry weather also helped fires spread in Idaho and southern California. The Oregon fire ignited a series of homes and set off explosions Tuesday afternoon. Officials have not determined the cause of the fire. In southern Idaho, the lightning-sparked wildfire spread across 820 square kilometers. With more than 327,000 acres of land damaged, it has become the nation's largest actively battled wildfire since it started on Saturday. Two hundred homes in southern California's Kern County—about 97 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles—were temporarily evacuated as firefighters planned an aerial attack on a 1,300-acre wildfire. The county's fire commander, Mark Geary, said low temperatures and higher humidity allowed crew to control the three-square-kilometer fire overnight. Another California fire hit Yosemite National Park on August 9 and has been burning since then while crews manage the fire for ecological reasons, the park said. The lightning-sparked fire damaged a total of 160 acres in the Lake Vernon area north of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Firefighters had mostly contained another fire east of Mount Diablo State Park in Contra Costa County, California, by Wednesday morning. The fire covered 375 acres of land but no evacuations were ordered.
