California fires rage, but some defend their property at gunpoint

GREENVILLE, Calif .–

More than three weeks after igniting in an isolated canyon, the Dixie monster fire continued to break records on Friday, overtaking Oregon’s Bootleg fire to become the largest fire in the United States and the third of California history.

As the effects of climate change are felt more intensely around the world, this singular fire raged across four counties – Butte, Lassen, Plumas and Tehama – and had burned 679 square miles, an area considerably larger than the city of Los Angeles.

Fanned by extreme drought, dry vegetation and gusty winds, it burned faster and behaved more erratically than even veteran firefighters remember ever seeing.

After razing the town of Greenville in the Sierra Nevada, the blaze continued to spread and put out point fires on Thursday, burning in the small community of Canyondam as it spanned 110,000 acres. That was more than double the 50,000 acres it had grown on the previous day, said Rick Carhart, public information officer at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“There were times during the fire where pretty much every time an embers broke loose and landed in the grass, it was almost guaranteed to ignite and set off another point fire,” a- he declared.

Firefighters were working on Friday to protect homes around Lake Almanor, where the fire had reached the western shore but had not yet burned down to the peninsula, they said.

No deaths have been reported so far in the Dixie fire, but some residents are taking risks that alarm authorities. Law enforcement has issued evacuation orders for thousands of residents whose communities were under siege, but some choose to stay put, posing more challenges.

Greg Hagwood, a Plumas County supervisor, said that over the past 72 hours, as fire has swept or threatened small mountain towns, including Greenville, evacuations have become strained – in some cases residents met the police with weapons.

“They are met with people who have guns and [are] saying, ‘Get out of my property and you don’t tell me to go,’ ”he said.

In response to those who categorically refused to evacuate, he said, MPs were asking for information on relatives so that they would have someone to inform if the recalcitrant died.

Authorities were forced to establish a temporary refuge area on a high school baseball field on Wednesday for people who had to flee or be rescued after choosing to stay in Chester. Some firefighters had to stop fighting the flames to get people there, officials said.

Such ventures come at a cost, said Captain Mitch Matlow, public information officer of the Dixie fire.

“Then the fire can progress into areas where we could have stopped it otherwise, and the lives of firefighters and the residents they move to protect are endangered,” he said.

Authorities on Thursday arrested three people who remained in an evacuation area in the town of Westwood, Lassen County. All three were taken to jail, summoned and released – two believed to have entered or remained in an evacuation area, and one suspected of loitering on private property, said Lisa Bernard, head of the information at the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office.

“When we ask people to leave their homes, we take our duty to protect their property very seriously,” Bernard wrote in an email. Those who remain are required to shelter in place inside their homes, and those who roam the streets are at risk of arrest, she said.

Hagwood said that as a former sheriff of Plumas County and a resident of Quincy, its historic heart, he had been on both sides of evacuation orders – issuing and being subject to them.

A few years ago, during the Minerva fire, he was forced to issue an order covering his own house, as well as that of his parents on the street. Hagwood said the emotional intensity of evacuations on law enforcement and residents cannot be underestimated, especially in rural areas where everyone seems to know each other.

“You’re talking about people’s homes, their possessions, whatever they’ve worked for their entire lives and sometimes generations,” Hagwood said. “The fact that the government, be it local, state or federal, comes to tell you that you must move away from it is going to be met with a certain setback.

“If you are in a large metropolitan area, you are making decisions that affect people that you have never met, that you will never see,” he added. “Here you will see them at the grocery store. You will be next to them at your children’s sporting events in the future. “

Don Guess of Crescent Mills chose not to evacuate because he had had enough – this was the third time he was asked to leave during this fire.

The first time he went to his father’s house near Lake Almanor. He was told to evacuate from there as well.

This time he stayed because every two hours he had to fill up with gas on his generator to keep the jets on at home.

But on Friday, after being assured that the firefighters would position themselves in a place that would allow them to protect his home, he was considering joining his wife, who was already in Quincy.

“It’s crazy,” Guess said as he bought a bratwurst at Gigi’s market, which remained open to provide a constant flow of rescuers ready to eat whatever its owner was capable of preparing. “I’m going to leave after I have eaten something. “

Firefighters were hoping that a break in the weather, with more stable and wetter conditions for the next week or so, would help them gain the upper hand.

Yet containment of the fire fell to 21% by Friday evening, and more than 13,800 structures remained at risk. The smoke was polluting downwind communities on Friday, including much of Lake Tahoe.

The Dixie Fire ignited on July 13 near a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power plant in Feather River Canyon. PG&E said its equipment could be to blame and also may have started a separate fire nine days later that eventually merged with the Dixie fire.

A perfect storm of conditions caused the blaze to spread rapidly, officials said.

“It’s all things together,” Matlow said Thursday. “It’s the heat. These are dry fuels. It’s drought. This is the wind that we saw yesterday. This is the slope.

The firefighters were initially challenged by the steep and remote terrain, with some spots so rough that they couldn’t get the engines close enough to get the hose in.

The fire then moved to areas with heavy wood and no history of recent burning, where the undergrowth served as ladder fuel that allowed the flames to climb into the treetops.

“This is where you get very extreme fire growth as well, because of these trees spotting in front of them,” Carhart said.

After the fire developed for about three weeks and amid the deteriorating weather conditions that saw gusts of wind to 40 mph, it encountered islands of unburned fuel inside the perimeter that have threw embers through containment lines that firefighters had established, Carhart said. This sparked its run to Almanor Lake, Greenville and Chester, he said.

By this time, its size had made it impossible to control, as it was sending out a huge plume of smoke and ash that generated its own weather conditions.

“The fire was so big that it was then developing on its own,” Carhart said.

As firefighters rushed to advance against the giant, some residents were allowed to return to the ruins of their communities.

Kevin Goss, owner of a Greenville pharmacy and Plumas County supervisor, had the chance to assess the damage in his hometown on Friday for the first time since his evacuation.

At the first checkpoint, Goss encountered a state soldier who was on duty while his own house in Colfax was under evacuation orders.

Further down the road, where he had to travel behind a pilot vehicle because the bridge’s retaining wall was still on fire, he encountered County Sheriff Todd Johns coming down the mountain.

The two had been friends for years and were stoic but stunned by the losses they witnessed.

Goss soon met another close friend, a state soldier whose house was in ashes within half a mile of where he was on duty.

The men exchanged news about where the fire was moving, steadily closing in on Goss’ house deeper in the valley.

Goss turned onto a side road leading to Greenville to check out friends’ homes.

Site after site, the houses where he had gathered with his friends and family were nothing but molten steel and piles of ruins.

The fire had cremated the Hideaway Motel and Lodge, which his parents owned when they moved here in the 1970s, down to its giant stone fireplace.

It was a great place to grow up, said Goss, recalling being snowed in on New Years when he was 5, when the whole town came by snowmobile to celebrate the holidays.

Further down, there were signs that all had not burned down. A brown-sided house that belonged to his former brother-in-law was unharmed, its satellite dish still pointing skyward.

Nearby, two chickens were pecking at fallen cheekbones from a tree, and deer that had survived the fire wandered through yards where sprinklers had kept the grass green.

The road was so smoky that you needed headlights in the middle of the day. Slowly, Goss was getting closer to what he really wanted to see: the oldest building in town, built in 1860. His pharmacy.

When the property finally appeared, there was little more than a shock on her face.

Nothing remained.

In the back of the building was a bunch of twisted plastic with the remains of an old fire truck. It was a toy he played with as a child, its metal shell now black, its red paint faded.

Standing next to the ruin, Goss could only try to find some humor in the midst of the ashes of the late Dixie.

“I didn’t even know there were bricks inside some of those walls,” he said, looking at their remains in the rubble. “Now that’s funny.”