Wildfire destroys California town – “We lost Greenville tonight” – 2021 fire season on track to be California’s worst ever
By Christopher Weber and Noah Berger
5 August 2021
GREENVILLE, California (AP) – A 3-week-old wildfire engulfed a tiny Northern California mountain town, leveling most of its historic downtown and leaving blocks of homes in ashes, while a new wind-whipped blaze destroyed homes as crews braced for another explosive run of flames Thursday amid dangerous weather.
The Dixie Fire, swollen by bone-dry vegetation and 40 mph (64 kph) gusts, raged through the northern Sierra Nevada community of Greenville on Wednesday evening. A gas station, church, hotel, museum and bar were among fixtures gutted in the town dating to California’s Gold Rush era that had some wooden buildings more than 100 years old.
The fire “burnt down our entire downtown. Our historical buildings, families homes, small businesses, and our children’s schools are completely lost,” Plumas County Supervisor Kevin Goss wrote on Facebook.
“We lost Greenville tonight,” U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents the area, said in an emotional Facebook video. “There’s just no words.”
As the fire’s north and eastern sides exploded Wednesday, the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office issued an urgent warning online to the town’s approximately 800 residents: “You are in imminent danger and you MUST leave now!”
A similar warning was issued Thursday for residents of another tiny mountain community, Taylorsville, as flames pushed toward the southeast.
To the northwest, crews were protecting homes in the town of Chester. Residents there were among thousands under evacuation orders or warnings in several counties, but no injuries or deaths were immediately reported.
Margaret Elysia Garcia, an artist and writer who has been in Southern California waiting out the fire, watched video of her downtown Greenville office in flames. The office contained every journal she’s written in since second grade and a hand edit of a novel on top of her grandfather’s roll-top desk.
“We’re in shock. It’s not that we didn’t think this could happen to us,” she said. “At the same time, it took our whole town.”
Firefighters on Wednesday had to deal with people reluctant to leave. Their refusals meant that firefighters spent precious time loading people into cars to ferry them out, said Jake Cagle, an incident management operations section chief.
“We have firefighters that are getting guns pulled out on them, because people don’t want to evacuate,” he said.
The fire was near the town of Paradise, which largely was destroyed in a 2018 wildfire that became the nation’s deadliest in at least a century and was blamed on PG&E equipment. [more]
‘We lost Greenville’: Wildfire decimates California town
“Apocalyptic scenes in every direction”: Wildfire destroys much of historic California town of Greenville
5 August 2021 (CBS News) – A wildfire tore through a historic mountain town in Northern California, leaving much of the downtown in ashes as crews braced for another explosive run of flames amid dangerous weather.
The Dixie Fire, swollen by bone-dry vegetation and 40-mph gusts, raged through the northern Sierra Nevada town of Greenville Wednesday evening. A gas station, hotel and bar were among the many structures gutted in the town, which dates to California’s Gold Rush era and has some buildings more than a century old.
It left “apocalyptic scenes in every direction,” said CBS News’ Bradley Blackburn. […]
The trees, grass and brush were so dry that “if an ember lands, you’re virtually guaranteed to start a new fire,” Matlow said.
The blaze was running parallel to a canyon area that served as a chimney, making it so hot that it created enormous pyrocumulus columns of smoke. These clouds bring chaotic winds, making a fire “critically erratic” so it’s hard to predict the direction of growth, he added. […]
This fire season is on track to be California’s worst ever, CBS News’ Blackburn points out.
Governor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday, “Five-hundred-eighty-thousand acres have burned. Put that in perspective: Last year, it was about 260,000 acres, so more than double the acres burned so far year to date, and we’re just, you know, we’re just getting started.”
Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in America’s West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. [more]
