By JULIE WATSON and KRYSTA FAURIA, Associated Press FALLBROOK, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters in Southern California were on high alert for dangerous fire potential even before the first blazes broke out. But once flames met ferocious winds, fire crews were mostly powerless to stop infernos that destroyed more than 500 buildings, killed dozens of horses and…
By AMANDA LEE MYERS and JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press BONSALL, Calif. (AP) — A routine day at an elite training center for racehorses transformed into terror and chaos in minutes, with hundreds of thoroughbreds stampeding out of their stalls in a desperate attempt to flee a Southern California wildfire that set their barns ablaze. Turned loose…
By ELLIOT SPAGAT and ANDREW DALTON, Associated Press FALLBROOK, Calif. (AP) — Retirement communities built on golf courses, semi-rural race horse stables and other usually serene sites were engulfed by flames as the San Diego area became the latest front in California’s wildfire fight. The fire broke out Thursday amid dry, hot, windy conditions across the…
By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, died Sunday after nearly a half-century in prison. He was 83.…
By DON THOMPSON and PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif. (AP) — The gunman behind a rampage in Northern California was out on bail for a charge of stabbing a neighbor, had been the object of complaints from neighbors who said he had been firing off hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and had been…
By DON THOMPSON and PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif. (AP) — A gunman driving stolen vehicles and choosing his targets at random opened fire “without provocation” in a tiny rural Northern California town Tuesday, killing four people and wounding at least 10 others, including a student at an elementary school, before police shot…
RED BLUFF, Calif. (AP) — A series of shootings at multiple locations in rural Northern California left three people dead and several others wounded Tuesday, including students at an elementary school, authorities said. Law enforcement officers killed the shooter, but it was not clear if authorities counted it among the three deaths. Tehama County Assistant Sheriff…
By JANIE HAR and MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The wildfires that have devastated California this month caused at least $1 billion in damage to insured property, officials said Thursday, as authorities raised the number of homes and other buildings destroyed to nearly 7,000. Both numbers were expected to rise as crews…
By SUDHIN THANAWALA and BRIAN MELLEY, Associated Press SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — The winds eased, some of the smoke began to clear and the forecast Monday offered a tantalizing chance of rain to thousands of firefighters trying to corral the wildfires that have laid waste to the nation’s most celebrated wine-making region. The progress was…
By SUDHIN THANAWALA and ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — They fled in fear nearly a week ago. Now they’re ready to go back. While wildfires are still burning powerfully in parts of Northern California, some of the tens of thousands of evacuees are getting antsy to return to homes that aren’t under immediate…