Carr Fire Destroys 500 Structures While It Crosses Shasta and Redding, California

REDDING, Calif. – In the small community of Keswick in northern California, there are only a handful of houses left. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and chemicals.

The rubble of people's lives again brooded a day after the so-called Carr Fire passed through Shasta County as a freight train. The flames have so well eaten homes that it's hard to tell how much they once stood above the pile of ashes and rubble that remain.

Somewhere, there was the home of Shyla and Jason Campbell, a firefighter who was at six o'clock fighting a forest fire near Yosemite Valley when Carr 's fire broke out. installed at his place.

Shyla Campbell, 32, said it was nearly 2 pm Thursday when she received an official alert to evacuate.

"There are huge flames, it goes up the hill, and everyone is outside and we look, then it goes down, and everyone says," Oh, that's coming out, "she said. tell me, "No, it's going down the mountain and it's going to go up the next ridge." "

She was right

The family spent the night in a hotel, when Jason Campbell came back from there. fire that he was fighting on Friday, he discovered that his own home was gone in flames, along with a recreational vehicle and a boat.

The Campbell's five-year-old home is part of at least 500 structures that According to officials, were destroyed by the fire that also swept the historic city of Shasta and destroyed the homes of Redding, a city of 92,000 inhabitants of the border of Oregon. is shown from damage caused by a wildfire near Keswick, California "srcset =" https: // cbsnews 1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2018/07/28/b3d5d1b2-9ac6-4046-8bf7-6e3a5dd0178a/resize/620xg2/45ca0a1e1965cd5f8b4e1f3b8374b1f5/keswick.jpg 1x "/>

"It's hard," Shyla Campbell said Friday from the town of Shasta Lake. "I just have to know where we are going to stay, we are just trying to stay away from the fire."

So there are about 37,000 people who remain under evacuation on Friday. Nearly 5,000 homes in the region were threatened by the 75 square kilometer fire, which is contained at only 5 percent.

Thousands of people scrambled to escape before the walls of flames descended from the wooded hills in their neighborhoods on Thursday. Locals hastily gathered their belongings and described a chaotic and cluttered escape as the embers exploded a mile ahead of the flames and fire spread across the wide Sacramento River and set fire to the Redding subdivisions.

"Houses were exploding, cars were exploding and I have a wife and children and I said:" I'd better face my wife just in case, & # 39; ; " said Tom Mahan. "I did not tell him why I was doing it but I wanted to see her again."

Redding Police Chief Roger Moore was among those who lost their homes, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Greg and Terri Hill evacuated their 18-year-old Redding home on Thursday night with a little more than their drugs, photo albums, clothes and guns, assuming they would be back in a few days.

But when they returned on Friday, there was almost nothing left of their home but fine particles of ashes.

The remains were burning so much that they could not be too close to see if anything was surviving.

"It's quite moving," Terri Hill said. "I know it's just stuff, a lot of memories, but we'll make new memories and new things.

The Hills fled before they were told, knowing that the danger was running out of the plane and that the helicopters suddenly started flying low over their house .

Liz Williams took two children in her car and was found stranded in traffic with neighbors trying to retreat from Redding Estates Lake.

She finally jumped the sidewalk on the sidewalk and "reserved".

"I have never experienced something so terrifying in my life," she said. "I did not know if the fire was going to just jump behind Abush and catch me and suck me off."

The flames were going so fast that firefighters who were working in heat and bone dry conditions had to give up their efforts to fight the flames at some point in order to help people escape.

The fire, which created at least two flaming tornadoes that toppled trees, shaken fire fighting equipment and broken windows of trucks, "tore down everything," said Scott McLean, a spokesman for Cal Fire. Forest fires.

"They say it was like a" tornado of fire, "said Chris Corona, a man who lives in the area.

On Friday, he came back to sift what was left

house since birth, "he said, becoming emotional.

Two firefighters were killed in the fire, fire inspector Redding Jeremy Stoke and a bulldozer operator whose name was not immediately published.He was the second bulldozer operator killed in a fire in California in less than two weeks.

Firefighters warned that the fire would probably burn more deeply in urban areas before there is any hope of containing it, although it has changed direction or was stopped before it could burn in the core of the city.

Elsewhere in the state, significant fires continued to burn outside Yosemite National Park and in ns the San Jacinto Mountains to the east of Los Angeles near Palm Springs.