Several injured, homes burned, hundreds evacuated in California fires
On the first day of a hot Labor Day weekend, hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes as a fast-moving fire in Northern California injured three people and destroyed many properties.
As the hot Labor Day weekend began, a wildfire in Northern California burned several homes and prompted as many as 7,500 people to evacuate immediately. Cal Fire spokesman Suzi Brady reported multiple injuries and hospitalizations.
She claimed ignorance regarding the severity of their wounds.
Brady reported that people are still leaving their homes because the fire is spreading swiftly in 36 mph (58 kph) gusts.
At least 200 firemen are working to put out the fire on the ground and in the air, and she said more resources have been asked to help them.
Brady had no idea how many individuals were hurt or where they were being taken.
Weed councilwoman Sue Tavalero reported that the Factory Fire, which displaced roughly 7,500 people, began on the grounds of Roseburg Forest Products, a lumber mill to the north of the town of Weed. The fire swiftly spread into residential areas.
There were house fires, she claimed, but not in the Lincoln Heights area “”I don’t know how many. I’m positive several homes have been lost.” From 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. on Friday, when winds might reach up to 31 miles per hour, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for Siskiyou County (50 kph).
Artisan Willo Balfrey, 82, of Lake Shastina, said her grandson, a member of the California Highway Patrol, called her Friday afternoon to warn her of the rapidly expanding fires.
“He said, ‘don’t linger, grab your computer, grab what you need and get out of the house now. It’s coming your way.’ So I did,” Balfrey told The Associated Press.
She packed a suitcase with her passport, birth certificate, and other vital documents, as well as water, her laptop, iPhone, and their respective chargers, and left the house.
She finally came to the conclusion that “I’ve reached the philosophy that if I have all my paperwork, what’s in the house is not that important,” as long as she had her documents.
She parked, retrieved her neighbour, and went to a church parking lot in Montague, where she counted forty additional cars.
Olga Hood, upon hearing the news of the fire on her scanner, went out onto the front porch of her Weed residence and saw smoke rising over the horizon.
She did not wait for an official evacuation order because of the dangerous winds that often rip across the town at Mount Shasta’s base. According to her granddaughter, Cynthia Jones, she took with her only her important papers, medications, and a few personal items.
“With the wind in Weed everything like that moves quickly. It’s bad,” Jones, speaking from her home in Medford, Oregon, stated over the phone. “It’s not uncommon to have 50 to 60 mph gusts on a normal day. I got blown into a creek as a kid.”
Hood’s house of nearly 30 years survived both a fire last year and the disastrous Boles Fire that swept through town eight years ago, burning more than 160 buildings, most of them residences.
Jones stated that Hood was in tears as she described the loss of her relative’s home in the Granada village. She was unable to collect photographs that meant a lot to her late husband.