California's Soberanes Wildfire has spread to cover 50 square miles

Wildfire in California
(Image credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

Nearly 4,300 firefighters on central California's Big Sur coast continue to battle the Soberanes Wildfire, a raging blaze that has spread to cover about 50 square miles (or 32,000 acres).

The fire began last Friday and is mostly located in the drought-ridden Los Padres National Forest, but it has destroyed 57 homes and caused multiple parks to close. As of Saturday, the fire is just 15 percent contained as "high temperatures [and] rugged, steep terrain" make firefighters' work difficult.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.