Huge Dixie Fire leaves residents bewildered
Unpredictable: Firefighting plans go awry as blaze continues to change
HAMILTON BRANCH >> The ring of tight-knit homes nestled between Lake Almanor and the mountain ridge was deserted save for the Turners, their two dogs and a flock of chickens.
Across the street, the former assistant fire chief had fled a few days ago, followed by the Edwards family farther down the forested road.
Kicking at the fresh chunks of ash in the driveway, John Turner glanced up for signs of smoke over the ridge. His wife, Alisa, peered into the family van — doors and trunk flung wide open — and tossed the dog bed atop the wedding photos she had unearthed
that morning from the couple’s home.
“If we’re here tomorrow, we’re here tomorrow,” she said. “If we’re not, I don’t know where we’ll be.”
For more than three weeks, the Dixie fire has burned through the northern Sierra Nevada mountains with a stubborn unpredictability that has left residents in a state of purgatory, faced with the wrenching question of whether — or when — to leave their homes. At more than 432,000 acres, the fire is poised to become the second largest in California’s history, spreading across an area larger than the entire city of Los Angeles.
Around the Almanor shoreline, people living in a patchwork of off-thegrid cabins, Old West-style towns and sprawling vacation mansions along the lake’s shoreline were first told to evacuate — and then return home — nearly two weeks ago. But then they were told to flee again this week as hot, dry winds pushed the fire northwest for a second time.
But the risks of staying home registered with horrible clarity this week when the town of Greenville, a community of 1,100 people that dates back to the 1850s, burned to the ground, its beloved downtown buildings reduced to piles of ash.
Those who grew up around the area and live side-by-side with lifelong friends can all name Greenville landmarks such as the drugstore on Main Street and the high school along the two-lane highway. Officials estimated 100 buildings in the town had been destroyed.
“It just — it is what it is. It is what it is,” said John Turner as his wife — who went to Greenville Elementary School — quietly wiped away tears. “It could be worse, but what the heck?”
Faced with challenging terrain and unpredictable winds, firefighters have struggled to get the upper hand on the massive fire, which in the past two days has grown by more than 100,000 acres and by Friday evening was still just 35% contained.
“It’s just so huge; it’s so big,” Cal Fire spokesperson Rick Carhart said. “The size of the fire and the number of different places and the amount of people in those places … is pretty extraordinary.” When the fire broke out in mid-July, about 15 miles northeast of Paradise, it was surrounded by sheer vertical rockface and steep canyons that were nearly impossible for equipment or for hand crews to climb, Carhart said. Paradise is still rebuilding from California’s deadliest blaze, the 2018 Camp fire that killed 86 people and decimated the town.
As the Dixie fire burned itself out of the remote cliffs, crews built up contingency lines south of the Lake Almanor area. But at the end of July, the blaze started spitting embers pell-mell into unburned “islands” of vegetation, bursting northward far faster than crews could contain.
“We had such a good plan here and things were looking really good for a number of days,” Carhart said. “We did all this work and it held, and it held, and it held. Until it didn’t.”
Amanda Gwaltney, who lives on Almanor’s east shore, hunkered down at the water’s edge with her two Chihuahuas in the front seat and cowboy hats belonging to her husband’s late grandfather in the back. At the bottom of the abandoned lakeshore, boats bobbed violently as smoke unfurled like a funnel over the water.
She had already packed, unpacked and repacked the car as evacuation orders flip-flopped over the past two weeks. The first time at least, her mom managed to pick up an antique table that was passed through the Redding family for three generations.
“It’s just progressively been like, ‘Who knows what’s going to happen?’” she said. “It was such a long ways off — nowhere near the lake. We just thought for sure they’d wrangle this thing in no time.
“We all felt this relief. And then it was straight back to the nightmare.”
Along Highway 36, a steady stream of fire crews, sheriff’s deputies and fleeing cars filled the highway, while others leaving — or staying — stocked up on water and Bud Light at a green-trimmed general store. Terry Haver juggled two cartons of eggs and held down her hair as wind blew up dust.
She had already shuttled six grandkids to a friend’s place about an hour away, but returned to gather a few more belongings from her house near a slender finger of water east of Lake Almanor.
“It’s horrible. It’s horrible,” Haver said. “We’re just going to camp out till we see what happens.”
With each evacuation order, the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office has patrolled the streets with sirens, sometimes knocking on doors and sending texts to well-known holdouts, Sgt. Ian James said.
The memory of the Camp fire, he said, has made people less resistant to leaving when asked.
“Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service will be the first to tell you, ‘We can’t predict the fire behavior anymore,’” James said. “I know people are concerned or really upset with the fact that they’re given an order, then they’ve kind of backed off on it. But what are we supposed to do?”
In the town of Chester, Rick and Donna Sylvester had planned to stay after the evacuation order was reinstated, but bailed when the fire started burning on both sides of the highway that cuts through town going north.
Fire crews managed to keep the fire out of town. But even camping about 15 miles away, the couple could hear the frightening wind gusts shuddering through the trees above them.
Donna rested her face on his shoulder, wiping tears on his overalls.
“I wasn’t ready,” she said. “I didn’t prepare, because I didn’t think we’d have to leave.”