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Eli Rosenberg
Generalist journalist covering national and last-minute news
A destructive and very fast forest fire erupted in northern California on Thursday morning, spreading rapidly due to a mixture of howling winds and extremely dry conditions.
The camp fire in Butte County, north of the state capital, Sacramento, had burned some 18,000 acres Thursday night and was at zero percent as officials struggled to evacuate residents of the area.
Social media were awash with apocalyptic images of smoky skies and orange neon horizon lines. Others have used Twitter to post messages about missing family members. The 27,000-strong city of Paradise, California, has been evacuated, officials told local journalists, as have the neighboring communities of Pulga and Concow.
The smoke from the campfire burning in the Feather River Canyon near Paradise, California, darkens the sky as shown on Route 99, near Marysville, California on November 8th. (Don Thompson / AP)
Twenty-year-old Colton Percifield said in an interview that he woke up at a friend's house in Concow to find smoke outside around 7am. Campfires quickly invaded the house.
"After half an hour, the whole place was on fire," he said. At 8:20, the house was in flames.
Percifield left in his van for an emergency meeting place in a field outside the city, ending up on an empty road with fire in a hell swelling on both sides of the road around him . A video that he filmed describes the hellish conditions that he has described. thick smoke and heat around the truck as the temperature rose in the interior, while sparks and giant flames licked the roof over his head in almost dark darkness. At one point, a tree branch fell on his car, breaking his windshield and shattering his hood.
Percifield stated that he had left the road a few times in low visibility conditions, but that he had eventually made it to a meadow where residents could gather in case of a bad weather. fire. He said people had talked about neighbors in Concow who could not run away from their homes.
According to Ryan Lillis, a reporter for Sacramento Bee, some 60 to 70 people were waiting for an emergency evacuation at a Walgreen's Paradise.
"Fire crews ask buses to take them out" he reported.
The escape routes were crowded by people trying to escape the growing fire, reported the Sacramento Bee, and first responders worried about the possibility of escape.
Many people have used social media to record their distress.
"My mother is stuck with other drivers on Pearson Rd in Paradise, with houses burning nearby," tweeted @jdpiersoniv. "People who leave vehicles and run with children and pets."
The National Weather Service predicted dangerous weather conditions for fires in California due to winds from Santa Ana, which blow from the east and accelerate along the mountainous slopes of north to south California.
Red flag warnings of "critical fire weather" were in effect not only for the Sacramento Valley, but also in central and southern California. Gusts of 50 mph were expected in many places.
Gusts on the slopes of the mountain not only fanned the flames but also dried up the soil surface, lowering the relative humidity to 10%, creating the conditions for the spread of fire in the powder keg. .
There were 23.4 million Californians under red flag warnings Thursday early Friday, after which the winds should calm down and give the responders better conditions to fight the fire.
California has experienced debilitating fires of unprecedented regularity in recent years. In August, the Mendocino complex fire became the largest ever forest fire in the state, burning more than 400,000 acres. The previous record was set less than a year ago in another catastrophic fire that ravaged more than 300,000 hectares in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. In October 2017, some 21 wildfires burned nearly 25,000 hectares and 7,000 buildings in Sonoma and Napa counties, in the heart of the California wine region, killing 40 people.
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