Two massive wildfires were threatening Northern California communities as a smaller blaze tore through a mobile home park amid gusty conditions late Wednesday, with much of the region under red flag warnings.
The latest: Fresh mandatory evacuation orders were issued for Susanville as the historic Dixie Fire closed in on the Lassen County town. Meanwhile, the monster Calder Fire continued to raze structures in the Sierra Nevada — including a church and a school, per the Los Angeles Times.
The blaze also triggered new mandatory evacuation orders for communities in El Dorado County after showing "unprecedented" behavior.
In Lake County, a grass fire propelled by winds of up to 30 mph razed dozens of mobile homes as it tore through the community, injuring one person before firefighters managed to curb its spread, AP reports.
By the numbers: 104 large fires were burning across the U.S. Wednesday, with 11 in California.
The Dixie Fire, the second-largest wildfire on record in California, grew to 662,647 acres by Wednesday night and was 35% contained after burning for more than a month. It has destroyed 1,217 structures.
The Caldor fire is blazing through California, growing to encompass more than 65,000 acres and forcing thousands of California residents to evacuate to safety.
The 65,474-acre fire, which was first reported on Saturday evening, has forced 35,528 Californians to evacuate, a drastic increase from the 21,191 residents evacuated as of Tuesday, according to the California Governor's Office of Emergency Service.
With two injured so far, the Caldor fire remains 0% contained, with the expected containment set for Aug. 31. The cause of the fire is currently unknown and is under investigation, according to CAL Fire.
In response to the fire, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a state of emergency for El Dorado County on Tuesday, when the then-roughly-6,000-acre fire had forced 6,850 county residents to evacuate their homes.
The governor also discussed the state and federal wildfire recovery efforts underway at Big Basin Redwoods State Park with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan.
Over the last month, officials in California have battled massive wildfires. Last week, the Dixie fire became the second-largest wildfire in the state's history, scorching almost 500,000 acres since its introduction in mid-July.
California's wildfires already erratic; worst may be ahead
BRIAN MELLEY
Smoke from California’s wildfires choked people on the East Coast. Flames wiped out a gold rush-era town. The acreage burned would dwarf the state of Rhode Island.
Images of homes engulfed in flames and mountains glowing like lava would make it easy to conclude the Golden State is a charred black landscape.
That’s hardly the case, but the frightening reality is that the worst may be yet to come.
California has already surpassed the acreage burned at this point last year, which ended up setting the record. Now it’s entering a period when powerful winds have often driven the deadliest blazes.
“Here we are — it’s not the end of August and the size and distribution and the destruction of summer 2021 wildfires does not bode well for the next months,” said Bill Deverell, a University of Southern California history professor who teaches about fire in the West. “The suggestion of patterns across the last two decades in the West is deeply unsettling and worrisome: hotter, bigger, more fires."
More than a dozen large wildfires are burning in California grass, brush and forest that is exceptionally dry from two years of drought likely exacerbated by climate change.
The fires, mainly in the northern part of the state, have burned more than 1 million acres, or 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers).
Firefighters are witnessing extreme fire behavior as embers carried miles by gusts are igniting vegetation ripe for burning in rugged landscapes, where it's hard to attack or build a perimeter to prevent it from spreading.
John Hawkins, a retired fire chief for the state and now wildland fire consultant, said he's never seen such explosive fire behavior in 58 fire seasons.
“I do think that's what we're seeing,” said North. “The current models we have for how fires are going to behave don’t cover this because it’s just off the charts. It’s hazardous to firefighters and hard as hell to predict what it’s going to do."
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