Carr Fire destroys 500 structures, kills 2
The Carr Fire has destroyed at least 500 structures as of Friday.
contain fires when they face steep terrain, hot weather, dry brush and other vegetation that can fuel a fire, said Greg Bertelli, an incident commander at Calfire.
“Any one of those factors will make containing a fire extremely difficult,” Bertelli said. “The Carr Fire, at times, experienced all three combined. This fire is moving, at times, three or four different directions.”
Three Marin County firefighters were trapped when a stand of pinyon pines lit up.
Holed up in the fire engine as the fire roared through, they suffered minor to moderate burns to their hands, face, ears and nose, said Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber. One was taken to the University of California, Davis Medical Center’s burn center.
Temperatures in Redding were expected to hit 110 degrees Saturday before a slight dip to 105 degrees by Tuesday, meteorologist Chris Hintz said.
The fire continues the most destructive span of fires in California history.
In October, the state’s deadliest firestorm hit Northern California’s wine country, killing 44 people. In December, the Thomas fire became the state’s largest fire on record, burning 281,893 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Few parts of the state
have been unaffected this year.
Yosemite National Park is closed as the Ferguson fire burns well into its second week, taking a firefighter’s life and consuming 45,000 acres. And the Cranston fire has forced the evacuation of thousands of people in and around Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains.
In Redding, the searing summer heat rising from the Sacramento Valley has been pulling coastal air over the mountains, creating a hard westerly wind.
The fire started in the Trinity Mountains on Monday and didn’t cause much alarm until Wednesday night, when dry wind drove it to Whiskeytown Lake, burning boats in a marina.
The next night it was poised to run into the west edge of Redding, a city of 90,000 just south of Shasta Lake.
Erica Bade and her family didn’t think they were in danger as they sat at the dinner table after watching the news. The fire was on the other side of the Sacramento River, about a mile away.
Then the power went out, an eerie sign the fire was coming.
Erica, a 17-year-old incoming freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara, started grabbing whatever clothes she saw and shoving them in a suitcase. She looked out the window.
“I see flames, fire!” she screamed.
She loaded the car in a cloud of smoke as ash drifted down.
Police officers shouted at residents to leave immediately.
Frantically, Erica and her family kept packing, making sure to take important documents, laptops and the family computer that stored many childhood photographs. Finally, an officer walked into their home through the garage and told them they had to go.
The Bade family drove away in tears, watching their rear-view mirrors as the flames reared up behind their home.
Erica figured it would be the last time she saw it standing. “It was just huge flames,” she said. “It did not look good at all.”
Just a few hours later, a Redding detective and family friend sent a photograph and called the family to deliver the news – save for a front porch pillar, the home was gone.
“We don’t really know what we’re going to do,” Erica said Friday. “We’re just trying to get through the day. It’s surreal to us all. We’re just going through the day, taking it as it comes.” there’s