Windy forecast: Survivors take stock as firefighters prepare for 35mph gusts.
FEATHER FALLS, Butte County — For days, neighbors Barry Dulsky and Susie Reid didn’t know they were on the state’s missing persons list after the North Complex Fire ravaged their remote mountain community, leaving them cut off from the world.
The community, about 30 miles east of Oroville, was one of a handful of rural towns where the voracious flames spread so fast that firefighters arrived too late to evacuate many residents or save structures. Both Dulsky and Reid lost their mobile homes.
“It’s just all ash everywhere, dead everywhere,” Dulsky, 65, said Sunday, as he fought back tears, sitting in a lawn chair surrounded by smoldering hillsides. “It looks like some kind of landscape off of another planet. If I allowed myself, I would just cry.”
The neighbors, both retirees, have been hunkered down in a home up the road, Reid’s sister’s place that was miraculously spared by the flames. They’ve been cut off from the world — without electricity, cell phone service, running water or clean clothes. Reid, 62, said it wasn’t until early Sunday that a neighbor told them they had been on the missing person’s list and alerted authorities that they had survived.
Dulsky and Reid are two among thousands who have suffered during the 2020 fire season. Since the beginning of the year, Cal Fire says wildfires have burned more than 3.2 million acres in California. And since Aug. 15, when California’s fire activity escalated, there have been 19 fatalities and more than 4,000 structures destroyed.
About 16,570 firefighters were battling 29 major wildfires statewide Sunday, according to Cal Fire. The federal, state and local resources assigned to active wildfires include more than 2,200 fire engines, 388 water tenders, 304 bulldozers and 104 aircraft.
The situation is expected to worsen on Monday, with windy conditions forecast. The National Weather Service has issued a Fire Weather Watch with winds at 10 to 25 mph, and gusts as high as 35 mph, are expected to be in California’s most northeastern region, but the weather system could impact Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties, where the North Complex has already burned 258,802 acres and is only 26% contained.
“The concern is the North Complex. We don’t want to see those winds pick back up over that fire,” said Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant. “The firefighters are definitely on high alert with those wind conditions.”
Already, dozens of homes in Feather Falls, a sprawling, unincorporated community in the Sierra Nevada foothills, had burned to the ground. And many residents who stayed say they felt forgotten and abandoned by state authorities, who were slow to confront fastmoving flames.
Dulsky said he stayed to take care of the animals who are still alive. Plus, Dulsky added, he and Reid didn’t know where else they would go.
A mile or two down the road, Rick and Cathy Shanahan were lucky to have their ranch home spared. The couple said they, too, have been angry more help from the state didn’t come sooner. They said there were no evacuation sirens or notices.
“They didn’t even come through to evacuate,” said Cathy Shanahan, 61. “We hope we don’t get forgotten up here.”
Feather Falls, named for a 410foot yearround waterfall, is 15 miles from the nearest town, Berry Creek, which was also smoldering in ruins Sunday. But there were still animals out there, and a fleet of horse trailers and pickup trucks waited like ambulances at a roadblock outside the ruined town for official permission to go rescue them.
“People on social media are pleading (for us) to go get their animals,” said Matt Miller, 40, a cattle rancher from Palermo who had volunteered for duty. “The animals that have survived — there’s no food, no water for three or four days now.”
He knew how to proceed. He had helped rescue a dozen horses from the Camp Fire in
November 2018, which killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures along with the town of Paradise, making it the most destructive wildfire in California history.
While the North Complex Fire is smaller in acreage than the lightning fires that have burned across the greater Bay Area since midAugust, it is more deadly. People living in remote towns have limited means of escape. It has already claimed 12 lives.
Windy conditions are also expected along Northern California’s southernmost fires. The Creek Fire in Fresno and Madera counties could see gusts of up to 35 mph, which could continue to move the flames deep into canyons of the Sierra National Forest. With the conditions expected to create more active fire behavior, authorities said the focus will be on structure defense. So far, 365 structures have been destroyed and 32 damaged, and 14,074 are threatened, according to the incident report of the fire that is covering 201,908 acres and is 8% contained.
The state’s third largestever fire, the SCU Lightning Complex, did not grow Saturday night into Sunday morning. The complex burning in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties stayed at 396,624 acres and is 98% contained.
Officials said winds are expected to remain light Sunday in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, which could allow crews to continue to mop up and control hot spots throughout the fire area of the CZU Lightning Complex. The complex was 86,509 acres and 89% contained as of Sunday evening.
The LNU Lightning Complex had covered 363,220 acres and was 96% contained by Sunday evening. Containment dropped slightly from Saturday, when it was 98% contained. The Dolan Fire is burning 117,242 acres near Big Sur and was 40% contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Tatiana Sanchez contributed to this
report.