A wind-swept wildfire in rural Northern California tore through a neighborhood and destroyed about 100 homes and other buildings, fire officials said Saturday after at least two people were injured and thousands were forced from their homes.
The Mill Fire started shortly before 1 p.m. Friday just north of Weed, a city of about 2,600 people 250 miles north of San Francisco. The flames raced into the Lincoln Heights neighborhood where a significant number of homes burned and residents had to flee for their lives.
“There’s a lot at stake on that Mill Fire,” he said. “There’s a lot of communities, a lot of homes there.” California is in a deep drought as it heads into what traditionally is the worst of the fire season. Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Yvasha Hilliard said she was home in Lincoln Heights when she heard “a big boom" and ran outside to see her neighbor's house on fire.Hilliard said her home was among those that burned. “We lost everything," she said. Dr. Deborah Higer, medical director at the Shasta View Nursing Center, said all 23 patients at the facility had to be evacuated. Twenty went to local hospitals while three stayed at her own home, where hospital beds were set up.
It was the third large wildfire in as many days in California, which is now sweltering under a heat wave that was expected to push temperatures past the 100-degree mark in many areas through Labor Day.
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