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 The blaze, which has scorched about 54,000 acres (21,853 hectares)
east of Lower Lake, a town about 110 miles (180 km) north of San
Francisco, was the fiercest of 20 large fires being battled by 9,000
firefighters across the state, officials said.
A separate blaze that killed a U.S. forest ranger on Thursday near
the Oregon border has also expanded, but remains a fraction of the
size of the so-called Rocky Fire that erupted in Lake County on
Wednesday and has proved the most destructive.
"This is a very fast-moving wildfire," said Daniel Berlant, a
spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire
Prevention, or Cal Fire.
Some 20,000 acres of scrub oak and brush ravaged by the fire over a
five-hour period on Saturday night represented "unprecedented growth
in that short amount of time," he added. By Sunday evening, the
blaze had blackened another 7,000 acres along the rugged eastern
flanks of California's Northern Coast Ranges, officials said.
 After destroying 24 homes and 26 outbuildings last week, the fire
continued to threaten an estimated 6,300 structures and has forced
the closure of parts of two state highways, Cal Fire said.
More than 12,000 people have received mandatory evacuation orders or
advisories, while ground crews have managed to carve containment
lines around just 5 percent of the fire's perimeter in the past two
days, officials said.
Around 2,700 personnel were battling the Rocky Fire alone by Sunday
night, about a third of the state's total force.
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Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott said "well over 20 wildfires" were
roaring across the drought-parched state following thousands of
lightning strikes in recent days.
"We're certainly stretching our resources," he told CNN on Sunday,
adding that National Guard troops had been mobilized, along with
reinforcements from other states and the U.S. Forest Service.
A Forest Service firefighter from South Dakota, David Ruhl, 38, died
on Thursday in the Frog Fire raging through Modoc National Forest
near California's border with Oregon.
That blaze, which was about 4 percent contained on Sunday, has
devoured 3,900 acres as erratic winds pushed the flames in all
directions, the Forest Service reported.
(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; Additional reporting by
Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angleles; Editing by Andrew Hay and Clarence
Fernandez)
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