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EL DORADO COUNTY-

The King Fire continued to spread Tuesday, growing to nearly 13,000 acres.

“This fire is doing things we’ve never seen before,” El Dorado County Sheriff John D’Agostini said. “It’s going crazy.”

Sheriff D’Agostini and others assembled at a town hall meeting to discuss firefighting efforts.

More than 1,600 homes are threatened, and firefighters say they need more resources.

“We only have so many helicopters available,” Les Curtis, of the U.S. Forest Service, said Tuesday.

Curtis added that terrain is difficult, even for air drops.

“We continue to have trouble,” he said. “It’s very steep drainage, the air tankers can’t get all the way to the bottom.”

The El Dorado County Board of Supervisors passed a local proclamation for a state of emergency, and plan to ask Governor Brown for a statewide emergency declaration Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a group of San Jose State researchers are studying the massive wildfire, and handing their findings over to Cal Fire.

“It spread very rapidly which means it was consuming a lot of fuel and releasing a lot of hear very quickly, allowed the smoke column to grow very tall and grow clouds on the smoke column has an affect on the fire behavior as well,” researcher Nate Lareau said.

Lareau says that smoke column reached 21,000 feet into the air.

Wind was another issue for firefighters, pushing flames closer to Highway 50, closing a chunk of the road overnight.