Northern California wildfire now largest burning in U.S. – KIRO 7 News Seattle

GREENVILLE, Calif .– (AP) – Officials say Dixie Fire in Northern California grew 285 square kilometers between Thursday evening and Friday morning, making the fire the largest conflagration currently raging in the country.

The Dixie Fire consumed 432,813 acres – an increase of 71,000 acres from the night before. The Oregon Bootleg Fire was previously the largest active forest fire in the country at 413,765 acres.

The Dixie Fire is only 35% included and is expected to grow. It is currently California’s third largest forest fire in history. The bootleg fire that started on July 6th is 87% contained.

THIS IS A LATEST UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

GREENVILLE, Calif. (AP) – Eva Gorman says the small California mountain town of Greenville was a place of community and strong character, where neighbors volunteered to move furniture, colorful flower baskets lit up Main Street, and writers, musicians, mechanics and chickens Peasants mingled.

Now it’s ashes.

When the hot, bone-dry, gusty weather hit California, what is currently the largest forest fire in the state raged through the gold rush Sierra Nevada community of around 1,000 people and burned much of the downtown area, which comprised wooden buildings more than a century old.

The wind was expected to calm down and change direction by the weekend, but this good news came too late for Gorman.

“It’s just utterly devastating. We lost our home, my business, our whole downtown area is gone, ”said Gorman, who heeded the evacuation warnings and left town with her husband a week and a half ago when the Dixie Fire approached.

She managed to snap a few photos off the wall, her favorite jewelry and important documents, but couldn’t help but think about the family treasures left behind.

“My grandmother’s dining room chairs, my great aunt’s bed from Italy. There is a photo that I keep in mind when my son was 2 years old. He’s 37 now, ”she said. “At first you think, ‘It’s okay, I have the negatives.’ And then you realize, ‘Oh. No. Not me.'”

Officials had not yet assessed the number of buildings destroyed, but Plumas County Sheriff Todd Johns estimated Thursday that “well over” 100 houses had burned in and around the city.

“My heart is crushed by what happened there,” said Johns, a lifelong resident of Greenville.

About a two-hour drive south, officials said about 100 houses and other buildings were burning in the fast-moving river fire that broke out near Colfax, a town of about 2,000 people, on Wednesday. There was no containment and about 6,000 people were ordered to evacuate in Placer and Nevada counties, state fire officers said.

The three-week-old Dixie Fire was one of 100 active major fires that burned in 14 states, most in the west, where the historic drought has dried up the country and left it ripe for ignition.

The Dixie Fire had consumed approximately 432,813 acres, according to an estimate released on Friday morning. That’s 1,751 square kilometers (676 square miles) – and moved the fire from the state’s sixth largest forest fire of all time to its third largest overnight.

The cause of the fire was investigated, but Pacific Gas & Electric said a spark could have been created when a tree fell on one of the utility’s power lines. No injuries or deaths were reported.

The fire exploded Wednesday and Thursday through wood, grass and scrub so dry that a fire officer described it as “essentially close to burn”. Dozens of houses burned before the flames took hold.

No deaths or injuries were reported, but the fire continued to threaten more than 10,000 homes.

On Thursday, the weather and towering clouds of smoke created by the intense, erratic winds of the fire made firefighters struggling to position firefighters at alternating hotspots.

“It’s devastating. The winds change direction every few hours, ”said Captain Sergio Arellano, a fire department spokesman.

“We are seeing really terrifying fire behavior,” said Chris Carlton, supervisor for Plumas National Forest. “We are really on uncharted territory.”

Heat waves and historic droughts related to climate change have made fighting forest fires in the American West difficult. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier over the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and make forest fires more frequent and more destructive.

The fire hit Greenville from two angles and firefighters were already in town to save it, but first they had to risk their lives to save people who had refused to evacuate by loading people into cars to get them out said firefighters.

“We have firefighters who are pulling their guns because people don’t want to evacuate,” said Jake Cagle, director of incident management.

The flames also reached the city of Chester, northwest of Greenville, but the crews managed to protect homes and businesses there, with only minor damage to one or two buildings, officials said.

The fire was not far from the town of Paradise, largely destroyed in a 2018 wildfire triggered by PG&E devices that killed 85 people, making it the deadliest fire in the nation in at least a century.

California fires aren’t the only wildfires that scorch large areas of the world. Thousands of people fled runaway forest fires in Greece and Turkey on Friday, including a major fire north of the Greek capital, Athens, in which one person was killed as a prolonged heatwave turned forests into tinder boxes and flames threatened populated areas and electricity installations and facilities historic sites.

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Weber answered from Los Angeles. Associated press writers Janie Har and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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