A wind-driven fire cut through a small California town near the Oregon border on Monday damaging or destroying 100 homes and prompting evacuation orders for at least 1,500 people, authorities said.
The town near the base of Mount Shasta in the Cascade Mountains was under siege from a 350-acre blaze that surged toward and through it through timberland.
The blaze erupted around 1:30 p.m. south of Weed, a town of nearly 3,000 located about 50 miles south of the Oregon border and about half way between San Francisco and Portland, Ore.
“It was fast-moving, fanned by incredibly gusty winds of up to 40 mph,” state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant. “It went into and around the town.”
Blowing embers started spot fires as much as a half-mile ahead of the fire front, and evacuations were called for Weed and two outskirt subdivisions.
Roughly 1,500 people were ordered to evacuate, fire officials said.
The winds began to ease late in the day, and the fire’s pace slowed. By dusk it was 15 percent contained, fire officials said.
For a while, authorities had to close Interstate 5, the main freeway between California and Oregon, in the area. The fire also knocked out power to most of the town, and people were left wandering the town center with flashlights 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 sheriff’s spokeswoman Erica Stuart said.
The blaze has burned 320 acres and destroyed 61 structures — 33 of them homes — as well as 13 vehicles and four recreational vehicles, CalFire spokesman Dennis Mathisen said. The fire started off a road outside of Oakhurst, near Yosemite, and spread to Bass Lake, a popular year-round destination.
About 650 firefighters were on the scene of the blaze, which is 35 percent contained and has not affected the park, Mathisen said.
Topics California Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Homeowners Oregon
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