WEED, Calif. — Residents whose homes burned Friday in the Mill fire in the Northern California town of Weed described an inferno that tore through neighborhoods in minutes Friday and took virtually everything they owned.
The disastrous blaze, fueled by a punishing heat wave and gusty winds, climbed Saturday to 3,921 acres with 20% containment. About 4,000 firefighters have been deployed, with crews arriving throughout the night and scrambling to wall off the fast-moving blaze from homes and other structures.
On Saturday morning, dozens of homes flattened to rubble by the intensity of the flames lay smoldering under a thick haze of smoke on either side of Highway 97 north of Weed’s downtown, cars and pickup trucks scattered throughout, sitting on bare rims with their tires burned away.
The blaze, suspected of starting around a local wood-manufacturing plant, quickly jumped to nearby homes and sent large numbers of residents fleeing the heavily forested former lumber town — population about 2,800.
“I lost my house, my dogs, everything but what I’ve got on,” said Dave Rodgers, 59, who had been about to take a shower Friday when he saw smoke through his bathroom window.
From his porch, Rodgers looked toward a local lumber mill a quarter mile to the south, where the blaze appeared to have started. He saw the fire coming over the hill, with sparks and ash descending upon his neighborhood: “It happened all at once.”
The Mill fire, the largest of a number of wildfires burning throughout California, comes as a sweltering statewide heat wave is expected to last through much of Labor Day weekend. Just a few miles to the north of Weed, a second blaze, the Mountain fire, has burned to nearly 3,400 acres since Friday in the small community of Gazelle and prompted hundreds of additional evacuations
The exact number of evacuees has not been announced, but a state emergency official said Saturday that at least 50 structures were destroyed in the fire, with the number expected to rise.
“We know that fire in the town of Weed has caused civilian injuries and power outages, impacted critical infrastructure, destroyed homes and, of course, has had results of thousands of folks evacuated,” Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said in a press conference about statewide heat conditions.
The blaze also closed a number of local roads and parts of U.S. Highway 97, which stretches from Weed to as far north as the state of Washington.
Cal Fire is investigating the Mill fire’s cause, but multiple Weed residents said it appeared to have begun at or near a lumber mill owned by Roseburg Forest Products, a large private wood-product manufacturer, right near the city’s fire department and a cluster of residences, as well as a local elementary school.
Rodgers, a retired Weed city worker who has lived in the town since he was 2 years old, jumped into one of his vehicles and sprung into action when he saw the mill burning. He first drove toward the fire to help an 85-year-old woman who lived just up the hill and found that another neighbor was helping her leave.
So Rodgers ran back downhill to another elderly woman’s home and told her to get ready to go. Then he scrambled home to pick up his adopted chihuahuas, TT and Xena, from the yard.
“I couldn’t get to the gate,” he said. “The fire kicked up and I couldn’t see anything.”
By the time he returned to get his elderly neighbor, her garage and deck were already ablaze. And as they fled the neighborhood, “flames came over the truck, and she started screaming.” The pair made it out alive.
Fortunately, the Mill fire’s rapid growth still had not reached the southern part of Weed, which is home to a number of downtown businesses, including the family-run Mt. Shasta Brewing Company, where an owner confirmed the surrounding area remained safe.
But weather conditions this weekend in Siskiyou County will not be forgiving. The area around where the Mill fire is burning is expected to be slightly less warm on Saturday, but the following two days could bring highs around 92 degrees with gusty winds that climb to 20 miles per hour.
“Simply put, it’s going to be elevated fire weather conditions across a good portion of Northern California, given the hot and dry conditions,” said Matt Mehle, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “The bigger contributor to fire, and fire spread, is the wind. Those wind speeds could make a difference.”
On Saturday morning, Rachel Thomas was driving around the edge of the community — surrounded by police tape — hoping to spot her dogs Chopper and Anika, who had been in the house when the fire struck.
She and her 15-year-old son Keeshan Barton lost virtually all their belongings when the flames destroyed their rented home of 14 years in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood. Thomas, 42, held onto hope that firefighters had gotten to the home before it burned and opened a door, and “maybe the dogs could’ve gotten out,” she said.
She’s lived in Weed for 20 years, she said, and now will be looking for a new home in the area — as will many others whose homes were burned. But housing, she said, “was already scarce.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday declared a state of emergency in Siskiyou County, noting that the fire was making its way to surrounding communities, including Lake Shastina and Edgewood, which could force many more residents to evacuate.
Attorney General Rob Bonta, meanwhile, issued a statement warning businesses not to price gouge those fleeing on emergency supplies like medical aid, food and gasoline. The evacuations on Friday coincided with heavy traffic across the state as travelers made their way to Labor Day weekend plans.
Near the now-flattened Lincoln Heights neighborhood, Yvette Hoy returned from running errands with her husband Friday afternoon to find their property burning, the flames jumping her yard toward the back of the house. Forty-five minutes earlier, there had been no fire in sight.
“I’m saying to my husband, ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!'” she said. “And he says, ‘You go, I’m staying!'”
The couple run hundreds of cattle and dozens of sheep, which escaped the fire along with their three horses. But they lost a tractor and a hay-baling machine, plus all the hay she’d spent the summer cutting to feed the cattle over the coming winter months.
Gone, too, is their house, and a lifetime of irreplaceable mementos.
“The chimney wasn’t even standing,” she said. “You leave home with the clothes on your back and that’s all you end up with — in 45 minutes. How does that happen? You see it on TV, but you never think it’s going to happen to you.”
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(Staff writer Eliyahu Kamisher contributed to this report.)
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