CNN News：强风助势美国南加火灾

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.

今日头条新闻美国加州。当地官员还尚不清楚新一轮的森林之火从何引起，但是新一轮大火已经迅速蔓延。洛杉矶西北部的文图拉县的火势是我们十月份报道的最严重火灾的三倍。

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.

它被称之为“托马斯之火”。曾经每秒钟燃烧1公顷土地。而在昨晚，仅有5%的火势得到控制，这意味着这场大火肆意燃烧没有边界。

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，11万人被迫撤离家园，数百所学校停课，5000名消防队员参与可这场灭火行动中，目击人群描述受火灾波及的地区就像战场一样。

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.

导致火势加剧的因素有数个。其一，炎热的夏季让该地区很多植被枯萎，这些植被仿佛火灾燃料。这里的湿度仅为7%。而通常湿度一般在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.

之后是圣安娜风。圣安娜风一般每年这个时段从沙漠吹来。但是风力并不强劲，阵阵干风，在海拔较高处风速达到80公里每小时。

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.

加州发言人表示圣安娜风可以将火势在一分钟内扩散到一个足球场。圣安娜的威力之大，其让可以投放数千阻燃剂的飞机被迫降停。