A fire driven by fierce winds raced through a small town near the Oregon border on Monday, burning a church to the ground, damaging or destroying 100 homes and prompting evacuation orders for at least 1,500 people, authorities said.
The tiny town of Weed near the base of Mount Shasta in the Cascade Mountains was under siege from a 140 hectare blaze that surged toward and through it through timberland.
The town sawmill caught fire and a Catholic church was destroyed.
The blaze erupted at about 1:30pm south of Weed, a scenic town of nearly 3,000 located about 80km south of the Oregon border and about half way between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.
“It was fast-moving, fanned by incredibly gusty winds of up to 40mph [64kph],” state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said. “It went into and around the town.”
Blowing embers started spot fires as much as 800m ahead of the fire front, and evacuations were called for Weed and two outskirt subdivisions.
About 1,500 to 2,000 people were ordered to evacuate, said Allison Giannini, spokeswoman for the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department.
The winds began to ease late in the day and the fire’s pace slowed. By dusk it was 15 percent contained, state fire spokeswoman Suzi Brady said.
“We stopped the forward spread of the fire,” Brady said late on Monday.
Randy Coates said he and his wife rushed to pick up their daughter when her high school was evacuated. He said that on their way back home, they saw the town’s Catholic and Presbyterian churches, houses and backyards on fire. Driving by a wood mill, they saw piles of wood chips on fire.
“As we came out of the high school both sides of the road were on fire,” Coates said.
For a while, authorities had to close Interstate 5, the main freeway between California and Oregon. The fire also knocked out power to most of the town and people were left wandering the town center with flashlights on Monday night.
Meanwhile, firefighters were trying to gain better access to two raging wildfires that have forced hundreds to evacuate their homes, including one near a lakeside resort that destroyed nearly two dozen structures.
In central California, firefighters spent the day working to build and reinforce containment lines in steep terrain near a foothill community south of an entrance to Yosemite National Park. About 600 residents from 200 homes remained evacuated, Madera County spokeswoman Erica Stuart said.
The blaze has burned 130 hectares and destroyed 61 structures — 33 of them homes — CalFire spokesman Dennis Mathisen said.
Further north, a wildfire about 100km east of Sacramento forced the evacuation of 133 homes.
El Dorado County sheriff’s officials said residents of an additional 406 homes were being told to prepare to flee.
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