California Wildfire 2017: Thomas Fire Nears Home of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi
One of the active wildfires in the state of California is the Thomas Fire, which is still spreading and is now posing a threat to the home of celebrity couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.
In a couple of social media posts through Twitter, DeGeneres informed her followers that their house was on one of the properties threatened by the wildfire. She added: "We just had to evacuate our pets. I'm praying for everyone in our community and thankful to all the incredible firefighters."
A few hours later, DeGeneres followed up with another tweet to tell her more than 76.3 million followers about how people in their community were helping each other amid the tragic fire.
The talk show host said: "Everyone in the Montecito area is checking up on each other and helping to get people and animals to safety. I'm proud to be a part of this community. I'm sending lots of love and gratitude to the fire department and sheriffs. Thank you all."
The Thomas Fire started blazing last week. Despite the continuing efforts of the law enforcement agencies as well as California's fire departments, the wildfire continues to spread and has now affected 234,200 acres of land -- from which only 20 percent has since been contained.
Based on the latest update from Cal Fire, the Thomas Fire has now spread to large areas in the Santa Barbara County and Ventura County. The wildfire gravely affected the traffic along Hwy 150 and Hwy 126, up to the north of Santa Paula.
The Thomas Fire is one of the largest active fires in California, as of this writing, while others are still plaguing nearby areas across the state. For example, the Rye Fire that affected parts of the Rye Canyon Loop and west of Valencia in the Los Angeles County is still ongoing but is already 96 percent contained.