Dixie Fire consumes most of California town
GREENVILLE, Calif. — After four years of homelessness, Kesia Studebaker thought she had finally landed on her feet when she found a job cooking in a diner and moved into a house in Greenville.
She had been renting for three months and was hoping stability would help her win back custody of her 14-year-old daughter. But in just one night, a raging wildfire tore through the mountain town and “took it all away,” she said.
Fueled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation, the Dixie Fire grew to become the largest single wildfire in state history. People living in the scenic forestlands of Northern California are facing a weekend of fear as it threatens to reduce thousands of homes to ashes.
“We knew we didn’t get enough rainfall and fires could happen, but we didn’t expect a monster like this,” Studebaker said Saturday.
The fire incinerated much of Greenville on Wednesday and Thursday, destroying 268 homes and structures and threatening nearly 14,000 buildings in the northern Sierra Nevada. It had engulfed an area larger than the size of New York City.
The Dixie Fire, named for the road where it started, now spans an area of 698 square miles and was just 21 percent contained.
Four firefighters were taken to the hospital Friday after being struck by a fallen branch. More than 20 people were initially reported missing, but by Saturday afternoon authorities had contacted all but five of them.
The fire’s cause was under investigation. Pacific Gas & Electric has said it may have been sparked when a tree fell on one of the utility’s power lines. A federal judge ordered PG&E on Friday to give details about the equipment and vegetation where the fire started by Aug. 16.
Cooler overnight temperatures and higher humidity slowed the spread of the fire. Calmer winds were expected Saturday, with temperatures topping 90 degrees instead of the 40 mph gusts and triple-digit highs recorded earlier in the week.
California’s fire season is on track to surpass last year’s, which was the worst in recent recorded state history. Since the start of the year, more than 6,000 blazes have destroyed more than 1,260 square miles of land — more than triple the losses for the same period in 2020, according to state fire figures.
California’s raging wildfires were among 107 large, active fires burning across 14 states, mostly in the West, where historic drought conditions have left lands parched and ripe for ignition.