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Fresno, California: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered 200 National Guard troops to report for fire training to relieve weary firefighters battling blazes that have scorched more than 1,709 square kilometres statewide.
That marks the first time the guard has been asked to send personnel to join ground-based fire fights since 1977, a guard spokesman said.
Hundreds of firefighters were working overtime on Tuesday to beat back blazes burning from the western edge of the Sierra Nevada to coastal mountains near Big Sur, where authorities enforced new, mandatory evacuations along a roughly 24-kilometre stretch of Highway 1.
Officials had hoped a fog bank along the Northern California coast would help suppress the fire, but the moisture did not extend inland, said Brian Tentinger, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey.
Even as crews made headway against some of the worst blazes, district officials grew concerned that wind patterns would send more smoke billowing into the valley, which is bordered on three sides by mountains.
The fires also have carried tiny particles of soot - blamed for triggering asthma and other respiratory problems - inland in the state's farm country, where some doctors have reported waiting rooms crowded with patients struggling to breathe.
"Our waiting rooms are full of people with sore throats, itchy eyes and sniffles," said Kevin Hamilton, a respiratory therapist with Sequoia Community Health Centre in Fresno.
In the Big Sur region of the Los Padres National Forest, about 200 people were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday, and evacuation orders remained in place for occupants of at least 75 homes who were forced to leave the region last week.
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