California wildfires kill two, raze 500 homes
It’s tough... I just have to figure out where we’re going to stay. We’re just trying to stay away from the fire.
Shyla Campbell, a resident
redding (California) — In the small northern California community of Keswick, only a handful of homes remain.
The air is thick with the smell of smoke and chemicals. The rubble of people’s lives still smoldered a day after the so-called Carr Fire moved through Shasta County like a freight train.
The flames so thoroughly ate up homes that it’s difficult to tell how many once stood above the pile of ash and smoking rubble that remains. Somewhere in there was the home of Shyla and Jason Campbell.
Jason Campbell, a firefighter, was six hours away battling a wildfire burning near Yosemite Valley when the Carr Fire moved in on his home and family.
Shyla Campbell, 32, said it was nearly 2am on Thursday when she got an official alert to evacuate.
“It’s huge flames, it’s coming up the hill, and everyone’s out and we’re watching it, then it goes down, and everyone’s like, ‘Oh it’s going out,’ “she said. “And I’m like, ‘No, it’s going down the mountain and it’s going to come back up the next ridge.’ “
She was right.
The family spent the night at a hotel. When Jason Campbell returned from the blaze he was fighting on Friday, he found his own home had gone up in flames, along with an RV and a boat.
The Campbells’ home of five years is among at least 500 structures that officials say were destroyed by the fire, which also swept through the historic Gold Rush town of Shasta and hit homes in Redding, a city of 92,000 about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.
“It’s tough,” Shyla Campbell said Friday from the city of Shasta Lake. “I just have to figure out where we’re going to stay. We’re just trying to stay away from the fire.”
So are about 37,000 people who remain under evacuation orders Friday. Nearly 5,000 homes in the area were being threatened by the 194-square-kilometre blaze, which is just 5 percent contained.
Thousands of people scrambled to escape before the walls of flames descended from forested hills onto their neighborhoods Thursday.
Residents who gathered their belongings in haste described a cha- otic and congested getaway as the embers blew up to a mile ahead of flames and the fire leaped across the wide Sacramento River and torched subdivisions in Redding.
Redding police chief Roger Moore was among those who lost their homes, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Greg and Terri Hill evacuated their Redding home of 18 years Thursday night with little more than their medications, photo albums, clothes and firearms, assuming they’d be back in a few days. But when they returned Friday, virtually nothing was left of their home but fine particles of ash. —