Firefighters contain half of wildfire near California wine region

By Curtis Skinner SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Firefighters battling a raging California wildfire near the state's celebrated wine region turned a corner by Friday as they managed to draw containment lines around half of the blaze ravaging drought-parched brush and dry timber. The 24,555-acre Jerusalem Fire broke out Sunday afternoon in rural ranch land north of Napa County's wine-producing region, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The flames spread rapidly, and while it grew by several hundred acres overnight, firefighters have now contained 52 percent of the flames, according to Cal Fire, as the department is known. About 150 people who were forced to flee hours after the fire broke out are still under evacuation orders, and the 50 homes they left behind remain threatened, Cal Fire said. Crews were focused on strengthening containment lines around the fire and crews had begun pushing into its interior to squelch hot spots, Cal Fire spokesman Steve Swindle said. "It's very, very rugged terrain, so it's very difficult," Swindle said. "It's just full-on grunt work." Much of the northern section of the fire has merged with the southern perimeter of a massive 69,438-acre blaze, which has been charring the desiccated vegetation for days. That inferno, the so-called Rocky Fire, has been the state's fiercest so far this season, though it is now 95 percent contained. It destroyed 43 homes along with dozens of outbuildings and forced hundreds of people to evacuate, according to Cal Fire. Swindle said that crews have made good progress, but hotter and drier weather is forecast for the area this weekend, along with gusty winds, all of which could work to stoke fires. Experts have predicted an unusually destructive wildfire season in California as the state grapples with a fourth year of crippling drought. The California fires are among dozens of blazes burning across the U.S. West. The Wolverine Fire in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington state covers 37,792 acres, and thunderstorms along with winds in the area could increase torching, according to the InciWeb fire information center. That blaze forced about 360 people to be evacuated from a camping area in the year-round Lutheran retreat of Holden Village, where the fire remains active, fire officials said. (Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; editing by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Bill Rigby in New York)