‘Terrifying’ fires force evacuations
Two firefighters are killed as a wildfire roars into a California city with little warning.
REDDING, Calif. — A wildfire that roared with little warning into a Northern California city killed 2 firefighters as thousands of people scrambled to escape before the walls of flames descended from forested hills onto their neighborhoods, officials said Friday.
Residents who gathered their belongings in haste described a chaotic and congested getaway as the fire leaped across the Sacramento River and torched subdivisions in Redding, a city of 92,000 about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.
“I’ve never experienced something so terrifying in my life,” said Liz Williams, who loaded up two kids in her car and then found herself locked in bumperto-bumper traffic with neighbors trying to retreat from Lake Redding Estates. She eventually jumped the curb onto the sidewalk and “booked it.”
“I didn’t know if the fire was just going to jump out behind a bush and grab me and suck me in,” Williams said. “I wanted out of here.”
The blaze leveled dozens of homes, leaving neighborhoods smoldering and 37,000 people under evacuation orders.t
The flames moved so fast that firefighters working in oven-like temperatures and bone-dry conditions had to drop efforts to battle the blaze to help people escape.
The fire, which created at least two flaming tornadoes that toppled trees, shook trucks and shattered windows, took “down everything in its path,” said Scott McLean, a spokesman for Cal Fire, the state agency responsible for fighting wildfires.
Fire officials warned that the blaze would probably burn deeper into urban areas before there was any hope of containing it, though it either changed direction or was stopped before it could burn into the core of the city.
Redding sits at the northern end of the agricultural Central Valley, surrounded by a scenic landscape. Rivers channel abundant winter rainfall into massive reservoirs used for boating and fishing. The area’s stunning mountains, including snow-capped Mount Shasta, topping 14,000 feet, are a playground for outdoor enthusiasts.
A firefighter with the Redding Fire Department was killed in Shasta County. Another firefighter hired to try to contain the flames with a bulldozer was killed Thursday, authorities said.
Fire crews in Redding for a time abandoned any hope of containing the flames and instead focused on saving lives.
“We’re not fighting a fire,” said Jonathan Cox, battalion chief with Cal Fire. “We’re trying to move people out of the path of it because it is now deadly, and it is now moving at speeds and in ways we have not seen before in this area.”
Late Thursday, crews found the body of the bulldozer operator who had been hired privately to clear vegetation in the blaze’s path. He was the second bulldozer operator killed in a California blaze in less than two weeks.