{"id":654239,"date":"2026-05-20T10:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654239\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:50:13","slug":"shipwrecked-sailor-may-have-set-cas-largest-wildfire-currently-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654239\/","title":{"rendered":"Shipwrecked Sailor May Have Set CA’s Largest Wildfire Currently Burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sailor who became shipwrecked on Santa Rosa Island off the Southern California coast may have inadvertently set what is now the state’s largest of several wildfires currently burning.<\/p>\n

The 67-year-old man crashed his sailboat on the island, which is part of Channel Islands National Park, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.<\/p>\n

Coast Guard officials initially said the sailor fired emergency flares to signal for help, which inadvertently sparked a wildfire, the New York Times reported.<\/a> Officials later said that the cause of the fire remains under investigation.<\/p>\n

The mariner was uninjured and rescued on Saturday morning, after spending the night on the island, according to the Coast Guard.<\/p>\n

The fire continued to burn: As of Tuesday afternoon, the Santa Rosa Island Fire had scorched 16,938 acres and was 5% contained, according to Cal Fire.<\/p>\n

Though the island is not permanently settled by humans, the blaze remains a major concern: There are six plant species found only on the island \u2014 and no where else in the world, according to U.S. Wildland Fire Service officials.<\/p>\n

The fire was burning close to a stand of Torrey pines, a critically endangered species found only on the island and in coastal San Diego County, the New York Times reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are absolutely concerned,\u201d Mike Theune, a National Parks spokesman told the Times. \u201cIt\u2019s extremely rare, considered possibly the rarest pine in the world, and it only grows naturally in these two places.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of Monday, the fire had destroyed three buildings and forced 11 Park Service staff members to evacuate from their housing, the Times reported.<\/p>\n

The Santa Rosa fire was one of several wildfires burning as of Tuesday. Among the others is the Sandy Fire, burning near the densely populated San Fernando Valley<\/a>, which has forced 17,000 people to evacuate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sailor who became shipwrecked on Santa Rosa Island off the Southern California coast may have inadvertently set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-654239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}