Seen in a long exposure photo, the embers light up the slopes as the Dixie Fire burns near Milford in Lassen County, California on Tuesday. Noah Berger / AP Hide caption
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Noah Berger / AP
Seen in a long exposure photo, the embers light up the slopes as the Dixie Fire burns near Milford in Lassen County, California on Tuesday.
Noah Berger / AP
GRIZZLY FLATS, Calif. – Wind-powered forest fires raged through drought-stricken forests in the mountains of northern California on Wednesday after hundreds of homes were burned and thousands of people were brought to safety.
A reversal of wind direction was expected to test some previously quiet fire containment lines, but also to push back flames in other areas, the authorities said.
The latest inferno, the Caldor Fire, continued to explode in the Sierra Nevada southwest of Lake Tahoe, covering 84 square miles after it suddenly devastated Grizzly Flats, a community of about 1,200.
At least 50 houses burned there, but the numbers were incomplete as officials were unable to thoroughly assess the damage in Grizzly Flats. Two people were hospitalized with serious injuries on Tuesday and around 5,900 homes and other buildings were at risk from the fire.
In the Sierra-Cascades region, about 100 miles north, the month-old Dixie Fire expanded thousands of acres to 993 square miles – two weeks after the fire wiped out the gold rush-era city of Greenville. Approximately 16,000 homes and buildings were threatened by the Dixie Fire, named for the street on which it began.
“It’s a pretty big monster,” said Mark Brunton, a fire department chief, in a briefing.
“We’re not going to get this thing overnight,” he said. “It will be an ongoing job – eating the elephants one bite at a time – and it will be a long-term mindset. It’s a marathon and not a sprint. “
A vehicle and property destroyed in the Caldor Fire in Grizzly Flats, California. Ethan Swope / AP Hide caption
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Ethan Swope / AP
A vehicle and property destroyed in the Caldor Fire in Grizzly Flats, California.
Ethan Swope / AP
The Caldor and Dixie fires are among a dozen major forest fires in the northern half of California. In contrast, southern California has seen few forest fires recently. Very humid sea air even caused occasional drizzle or light rain on Wednesday.
But the forest fires in Northern California left scenes of utter devastation.
There were few houses left in Grizzly Flats, where the streets were littered with derelict power lines and masts. Houses turned to glowing ashes and bent metal, only chimneys loomed over the ruins. A post office and a primary school were destroyed.
There were tons of burned-out vehicles on the rubble, and the skeletons of chairs lined up among the ashes of a church.
Derek Shaves, who fled Grizzly Flats late Monday, said he visited him the next day and found that his home and most of the houses in his neighborhood had disappeared.
“It’s a pile of ashes,” he said. “Everyone in my block is a pile of ash and every block I visited – except for five separate houses that were safe – was totally devastated.”
All 7,000 residents of the city of Pollock Pines were ordered to evacuate Tuesday because of the fire.
To the north, during the Dixie Fire, numerous fire-fighting resources were deployed in the Susanville area, a town of approximately 18,000 residents a few miles from the northeastern edge of the fire, where residents were warned to be evacuated.
Destiney Barnard is holding Raymond William Goetchius after he was stranded at a gas station near the Dixie Fire in Doyle, California on Tuesday. Barnard was helping Goetchius and his family evacuate Susanville when their car broke down. Noah Berger / AP Hide caption
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Noah Berger / AP
Destiney Barnard is holding Raymond William Goetchius after he was stranded at a gas station near the Dixie Fire in Doyle, California on Tuesday. Barnard was helping Goetchius and his family evacuate Susanville when their car broke down.
Noah Berger / AP
Fire officials said early Wednesday the fire did not advance toward Susanville overnight, and this was one place where the change in wind direction to the northeast could push the flames back on itself.
Late Tuesday, Pacific Gas & Electric began shutting down electricity for up to 51,000 customers in 18 northern California counties to help prevent wildfires for the first time since last year’s historically bad fire season.
The utility said the shutdowns were focused on the Sierra Nevada foothills, north coast, northern Central Valley and the mountains of North San Francisco Bay and could last through Wednesday afternoon.
The country’s largest utility announced the blackouts as a precaution to prevent gusts from damaging power lines and starting fires.
PG&E has notified utility regulators that the Dixie fire may have been caused by trees that fell into its power lines. The Dixie Fire began near the town of Paradise, which was devastated by a wildfire in 2018 that was ignited by PG&E equipment in high winds. Eighty-five people died.
The Dixie Fire is the largest of nearly 100 major forest fires that burn in a dozen western states, including Alaska. Most of the forest fires were fueled by high temperatures, strong winds and dry weather.
Climate change has made the western US warmer and drier in the past 30 years and, according to scientists, will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more devastating.
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