<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Crews battle California fire’s explosive growth

The Columbian
Published:
2 Photos
With Mount Shasta in the background, Cal Fire crews work in Weed, Calif., on Tuesday.
With Mount Shasta in the background, Cal Fire crews work in Weed, Calif., on Tuesday. The previous day's fire devastated the Northern Californian town with dozens of homes burned and many completely destroyed. Photo Gallery

WEED, Calif. — Teams of firefighters went house-to-house on Wednesday to pin down damage done by a wildfire that officials estimated had destroyed 110 homes and damaged another 90 in the small town of Weed while another Northern California blaze east of Sacramento was threatening more than 2,000 homes as it burned out of control, officials said.

The new figures from Weed brought a marked increase from the initial estimate that a total of 150 structures had been destroyed or damaged in the blaze that began Monday and rapidly swept across the town. Four firefighters lost their homes.

In the fire east of Sacramento, a total of 2,500 firefighters were now taking on the blaze that was threatening 2,003 homes and another 1,505 smaller structures, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

“It’s been an explosive couple of days,” CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.

The fire has burned nearly 44 square miles of trees and brush and is just 5 percent contained.

“We are faced with a large and dangerous fire,” Laurence Crabtree, a U.S. Forest Service supervisor for the Eldorado National Forest, told the Sacramento Bee. “We have had significant losses of public timber-

land, private timberland and watershed.”

Most of the threatened homes were in Pollock Pines, 60 miles east of Sacramento. Hundreds of them are under evacuation orders, but it wasn’t immediately clear exactly how many.

In Weed, two churches, a community center and the library also burned to the ground, while an elementary school and the city’s last wood products mill were damaged by flames that had been pushed by 40 mph winds.

On Wednesday, firefighters braced for more wind as they battled the 375-acre fire, and insurance companies worked to find places to live for the people who lost their homes.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation. It was 60 percent contained.

Burned neighborhoods remained off-limits, but people have been finding ways in since the fire started.

Loading...