Thousands flee California wildfire’s deadlypath

REDDING, CALIF. • Jim Chapin had dined out after work Thursday, confident that a distant wildfire would not reach his neighbourhood while he was away.

But when the 79-year-old Redding, Calif., resident got home around 7:30 p.m., police were telling people to hurry up and go. Chapin’s wife gathered prescriptions and the dogs and left. He stayed behind to hose down the roof and fallen leaves.

A half-hour later, fire was burning trees behind his neighbours’ homes and winds were whipping branches, burning leaves and garbage can lids. He feared he would be hit in the head.

“Everybody else had left,” Chapin said. “There was just all kinds of debris flying around in the air. Hot embers and hot leaves coming down all over the yard. I figured I better get out of here.”

He jumped in his car and almost immediately was in gridlock. Drivers honked, jumped the curb and cut off other cars.

There was no way for firefighters to get into the Lake Redding Estates subdivision, which has just one way in and out.

“Some people were panicking so much they were driving up on people’s yards just to get around other cars,” Chapin said. “It was crazy.”

Chapin was among thousands to flee the deadly Carr Fire that exploded on Thursday night, jumped the Sacramento River and raced into the western outskirts of Redding, a city of about 92,000, about 160 kilometres south of the Oregon border.

The fire in rural Shasta County turned so quickly that a reporter at KRCR-TV in Redding choked up as she reported live before the station had to go off air.