California residents tell of wildfire terror
● Death toll rises as dry conditions fuel blazes
The death toll in California’s wildfires rose to seven as shaken survivors recounted the horror of watching fast-moving flames whip through neighbourhoods and devour their homes.
An army of firefighters from across the country struggled on Monday to control 17 largescale blazes that have reduced expensive homes to smouldering piles of rubble, and turned tens of thousands of hectares into ashen wastelands.
“I’ve been a lifelong resident of this community, and I’ve never seen a fire with such destruction here in this area ever before,” Shasta County supervisor Leonard Moty said of the Carr fire, one of the largest.
Alyce Macken said she had only minutes to flee her home in the town of Redding with her husband as the flames swept closer.
“At six o’clock in the morning there was a knock on the door, a pounding, and it was the sheriff telling us that we had 15 minutes to get out,” Macken said.
“We were out in 10 minutes. I was shaking, it just went by really fast.”
Macken, who is retired, said she met other panic-stricken neighbours at a nearby shopping centre – and watched from afar as her home went up in flames.
“It was almost like a tornado with fire in it and it came over the hill and it wiped out our house, it wiped out our next door neighbour’s home,” she said.
About 38,000 people had been evacuated in Shasta County due to the Carr fire, officials said.
A thick smoke haze covered a large segment of northern California, severely limiting visibility and contributing to breathing problems.
According to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, 12,000 firefighters from as far away as Florida and New Jersey have deployed across the state.
A firefighter identified as Brian Hughes died on Sunday while battling the Ferguson Fire, which is near the Yosemite National Park.
Hughes was struck and killed by a tree while fighting the blaze, the Sequoia and Kings National Parks Service said.
“We grieve his loss,” they wrote on Twitter.
The remains of a person who ignored Carr fire evacuation orders was found in a burnt-out residence on Sunday, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said.
Two firefighters were killed earlier battling the Carr blaze and three people – a 70-yearold woman and her two greatgrandchildren aged four and five – perished when their Redding home was swallowed up by flames.
Firefighters and police were searching for seven people reported missing, Bosenko said.
He also said that 600 National Guard soldiers had been deployed to help in support duties such as roadblocks.
Donna and Billy Gill were forced to flee their Redding home and did not know when they would be allowed to return.
“Just not knowing is probably the hardest part,” Donna Gill said. “This is just unbelievable. We’re all in it together, that’s for sure.”
Redding police chief Roger Moore warned that looting had become a problem since evacuations began.
“Everyone we come into contact with in those neighbourhoods – if they don’t have a legitimate reason to be there, if we don’t arrest them for looting they’ll be arrested for something else,” he said.
Two people, a man and a woman, were later arrested on suspicion of looting evacuated homes in Redding.
The alleged burglars were tracked down and found with electronic items stacked by their front door.
One evacuee who had been forced to move four times warned that a 4.2m albino python that she owned was lost at her latest stop in south Redding.
“Eres is a beautiful, friendly snake,” Sandra Dodge-Streich, the owner of Redding Reptiles, said on Facebook.
‘It was almost like a tornado with fire in it and it came over the hill and it wiped out our house’
Alyce Macken
REDDING RESIDENT