Growing wildfire spurs evacuations

A dozen homes were ordered evacuated Sunday in California’s Santa Barbara County as a massive wildfire burned across 1,500 new acres, continuing a growth spurt for the nearly month-old blaze that had appeared to be standing still.

Warm and very dry weather during the night allowed the fire to burn through old, heavy trees in the Los Padres National Forest on its uncontained southeast side, officials said. The blaze has charred about 32,000 acres, or 50 square miles, since it started July 4 and was 70 percent contained Sunday.

An evacuation order was issued for the Peachtree Community, about 12 homes spread over a wide area of the forest. Smoke drifted over Santa Barbara more than 40 miles away and was reported in Bakersfield some 80 miles away, officials said.

Residents of another 200 homes were told to be prepared to flee at short notice.

HAMLIN, Pa.

Man struck again by lightning

Lightning can strike twice. Just ask Don Frick.

Frick said he survived his second lightning strike Friday – 27 years to the day of his first – and emerged a bit shaken with only a burned zipper and a hole in the back of his jeans.

“I’m lucky I’m alive,” Frick said in a phone interview Sunday night.

Frick was attending Hamlin’s Ole Tyme Daz festival on Friday afternoon when a storm came up quickly. He and six others sought refuge in a shed shortly before lightning struck the ground nearby. The strike sent a shock through Frick and four others in the shed.

“It put me up against the wall,” said Frick, 68. “When I came to and realized I was alive, the first thing that came to my mind was that I’m pretty lucky.

“It burned my zipper off, burned my pockets, but didn’t burn me.”

None of the others in the shed was seriously injured, Frick said.

Twenty-seven years earlier, Frick was driving a tractor-trailer in Lenox, Pa., when the antenna was struck by lightning, he said. He said that his left side was injured in that strike and that he was laid up for three to four weeks.

MINOT, N.D.

Texter misses mark, loses prize

Oh, no! Don’t forget the exclamation point! It could cost you $1,000!

Kevin Taylor, 30, of Minneapolis, lost out on a $1,000 first prize in a text messaging contest at the North Dakota State Fair because he forgot the punctuation mark at the end of a phrase that he and his sudden-death competitor had to enter.

So he settled for $200.

Beth Brevik, 32, of Minot, ended up with the big prize at Saturday’s contest, tapping out the phrase: “I hope I win the grand prize of $1,000 so I can buy a new phone. Whoo!”

“I was very lucky,” she said.

Brevik and Taylor finished ahead of 38 competitors, many of them teenagers. Organizers said the contest was patterned after a similar event in New York, where a 13-year-old girl won $50,000.

Brevik said she thought she lost when Taylor put his phone down in the final round. Seconds later, Taylor realized his mistake and exclaimed, “Oh, no!”