CNN News：強風助勢美國南加火災

We`re starting in the U.S. state of California. Officials there don`t know yet what started a new surge of wildfires. But they`re spreading extremely fast and one of them, in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, is almost three times larger than the worst fire we reported on in October.

今日頭條新聞美國加州。當?shù)毓賳T還尚不清楚新一輪的森林之火從何引起，但是新一輪大火已經(jīng)迅速蔓延。洛杉磯西北部的文圖拉縣的火勢是我們十月份報道的最嚴重火災的三倍。

It`s known as the Thomas Fire. At one point, it was scorching an acre every second. And as of last night, it was only 5 percent contained, which means most of this fire was burning wherever it could without boundaries.

它被稱之為“托馬斯之火”。曾經(jīng)每秒鐘燃燒1公頃土地。而在昨晚，僅有5%的火勢得到控制，這意味著這場大火肆意燃燒沒有邊界。

Throughout southern California, 110,000 people have had to leave their homes, hundreds of schools have been closed, 5,000 firefighters are involved in the fight and witnesses have described affected areas as looking like a warzone.

在南加州，11萬人被迫撤離家園，數(shù)百所學校停課，5000名消防隊員參與可這場滅火行動中，目擊人群描述受火災波及的地區(qū)就像戰(zhàn)場一樣。

There are several factors making these blazes worse. For one thing, the summer heat dried out a lot of the region`s vegetation, which is like fire fuel. Humidity in the area is a very low 7 percent. It`s usually between 20 percent and 30 percent.

導致火勢加劇的因素有數(shù)個。其一，炎熱的夏季讓該地區(qū)很多植被枯萎，這些植被仿佛火災燃料。這里的濕度僅為7%。而通常濕度一般在20%到30%。

And then there`s the Santa Ana winds. They usually blow in from the desert this time of year. They`re not usually this powerful, blasting gusts of dry, 80 mile per hour winds across higher elevations.

之后是圣安娜風。圣安娜風一般每年這個時段從沙漠吹來。但是風力并不強勁，陣陣干風，在海拔較高處風速達到80公里每小時。

A state spokesman says the Santa Ana winds can push a fire the length of a football field in a minute and they`ve been so strong that planes which could normally drop thousands of gallons of fire retardant have had to stay on the ground.

加州發(fā)言人表示圣安娜風可以將火勢在一分鐘內(nèi)擴散到一個足球場。圣安娜的威力之大，其讓可以投放數(shù)千阻燃劑的飛機被迫降停。