California fires also burn boats
REDDING, Calif. — Even a lake didn’t provide safe harbor from erratic California wildfires.
With flames exploding around Whiskeytown Lake, an effort to save boats at a Northern California marina by untying them from moorings and pushing them to safety wasn’t swift enough to save them all.
Dozens of charred, twisted and melted boats were among the losses counted Thursday at Oak Bottom Marina as firefighters continued to battle flames.
Wildfires throughout the state have burned through tinder-dry brush and forest, forced thousands to evacuate homes and forced campers to pack up their tents at the height of summer.
“The only buildings left standing … right now are the fire station and a couple of restrooms,” said Fire Chief Mike Hebrard of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “The boat docks down there — all the way out in the water — 30 to
40 boats caught fire when the fire laid down on top of them last night and burned those up.”
The fire burning west of Redding, about 100 miles south of the Oregon state line, tripled in size overnight and then grew another 50 percent through the day to 45 square miles,
forcing residents to leave homes and also led to a hectic late-night evacuation of historic artifacts at a Gold Rush-era museum in a state park.
The so-called Carr Fire was just one of several blazes that have dispatched firefighters to all corners of the state amid an oppressive
heat wave.
A huge forest fire continued to grow outside Yosemite National Park. About 100 homes were still under threat in the San Francisco Bay community of Clayton, although firefighters had stopped the progress of a small fire there after one house burned.