SACRAMENTO, CA—Much of the tiny Plumas County community of Greenville was in ruins early Thursday, reduced to ashes by the Dixie Fire.
CAL FIRE said the three-week-old fire grew to 322,502 acres overnight, driven by fierce winds, and leveled parts of Greenville, a Gold Rush-era community of about 1,000.
“Reports indicate that Greenville is 75 percent destroyed,” federal fire officials said in a morning incident briefing.
“We lost Greenville tonight,” an emotional Rep. Doug LaMalfa, whose congressional district includes Plumas County, said on Facebook late Wednesday. “My heart is aching.”
Eva Gorman, who runs a shop called Josefina Fine Knits, said in an interview: “The town is completely gone. The town has been devastated and leveled. There’s nothing left, almost nothing left of the town.” Her own business was destroyed, and many of the historical buildings appear to have been gutted.
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CAL FIRE spokesman Rick Carhart said “there were a number of homes and buildings destroyed,” but a full assessment of the damages wasn’t immediately available. Numerous photos and video posted on social media showed buildings on Greenville’s Main Street burning.
Carhart said he wasn’t aware of any reports of fatalities in Greenville. The Dixie Fire is the largest fire in California this year and the sixth-largest by acreage in state history. It grew by about 15% overnight and remained 35% contained for the third day.
Although authorities had feared that the small town of Chester, on the northwest side of Lake Almanor, was in danger, Carhart said firefighters were able to protect at least a part of the community. “They did a good job of saving a lot of the town,” he said.
Officials said the fire moved quickly into the little town, which was leveled by fire in 1881. The area lies about 80 miles northeast of Paradise, where the Camp Fire killed 85 people in 2018 in the deadliest wildfire in California’s history.
Earlier in the day, it didn’t appear that Greenville was threatened. “Everything looked good,” said Jake Cagle, operations section chief at the multi-agency command. But then “it slopped over,” he said. “It got into Greenville.”
The Plumas County sheriff’s office posted an evacuation order on Facebook, saying: “You are in imminent danger and you MUST leave now!!”
But when the fire rushed into Greenville, many residents apparently didn’t heed or receive evacuation orders, hindering firefighters’ efforts.
Cagle said on Facebook late Wednesday that “there’s still a lot of people unfortunately in Greenville. ... A lot of people chose to stay in there.” He said the presence of residents forced firefighters to go into rescue mode, undermining their ability to control the fire itself.
CAL FIRE said about 20,000 people have been evacuated in four counties, Plumas, Butte, Lassen and Tehama.
Carhart said the Lassen County community of Westwood, northeast of Lake Almanor, could be threatened, although the danger didn’t appear to be imminent. On Wednesday, fire inched closer to the lake and threatened the community of Almanor West, but firefighters were able to keep the community safe, he said.
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