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Flames rained down on Sandy Butler’s home in the forested hills of Northern California when she called her son to tell him that she and her husband were going to climb a fence and try to find shelter in a nearby pond.
It’s the last the family heard from the American couple, who disappeared Thursday (local time) after a fire raged with threatening speed in the Sierra Nevada foothills and destroyed much of the town of Berry Creek.
Noah Berger / AP
Embers fly across a highway as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, California. The fire, part of the North Complex caused by lightning, spread at a critical rate of spread as winds whipped through the region.
“We are still waiting and praying for good news,” said Jessica Fallon, who has two children with Butler’s grandson and considers them her own grandparents.
“Everything is replaceable, but not the life of my grandparents. I’d rather lose everything than those two. Like they kept the family together. “
The Butlers were among a dozen people believed missing in a fire that claimed at least three lives burning a 25-mile road in one day. More than 2,000 structures were burned in the lightning fire collection now known as the North Complex burning about 200 km northeast of San Francisco.
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Noah Berger / AP
A hand crew clears vegetation around a barn as the Bear Fire burns in the Berry Creek area of Butte County.
The wind-driven fire that tore up a river and swept through dense forest and arid vegetation is the latest extreme blaze to burn in the record books this year in California.
More than 12,500 square kilometers have burned so far this year, more land than Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington DC combined, and fall is often the worst fire season. Twelve people were killed and nearly 4,000 structures burned across the state.
The fires, fueled by drought-weakened vegetation amid warmer temperatures attributed to climate change, have spread at an alarming rate and given people less time to flee.
Noah Berger / AP
The North Complex fire is the 10th in the record books and growing.
Hundreds of campers, hikers, and people spending Labor Day weekend in reservoirs and mountainside retreats had to be evacuated by military helicopters when they were stranded by a fast-moving fire that broke out in the Sierra National Forest. in the center of the state during the record. -Establishment of high temperatures.
Six of the 20 largest fires on record in the state are burning, including the August Complex, centered in a desert about 210 km north of San Francisco, which is now the largest fire in state history. It has burned more than 1906 square kilometers. That beats a 2018 complex in the same region.
Adam Beam / AP
Douglas Johnsrude speaks on the phone at an emergency evacuation center in Gridley, California. Johnsrude evacuated his home in Feather Falls on Tuesday. You think you lost your home in the fire, but you’re not sure. He also lost his home to the Ponderosa Fire in 2017.
US President Donald Trump spoke with Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday “to express his condolences for the loss of life and to reiterate the administration’s full support for helping those on the front lines of the fires,” according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.
The North Complex fire is the 10th in the record books and grows as firefighters try to prevent it from advancing into the city of Paradise, where the most destructive fire in state history two years ago killed 85 people and destroyed 19,000. buildings
Noah Berger / AP
Flames lick above vehicles on Highway 162 as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, California.
Authorities lifted an evacuation warning for Paradise on Thursday, a day after residents woke to skies similar to the morning of 2018, when a windswept inferno reduced the city to rubble.
Under red skies and falling ash on Wednesday, many chose to flee again, jamming the main highway out of town in another repeat of the catastrophe of two years ago.
About 20,000 people were under evacuation orders or warnings in three counties of the fire.
Some 14,000 firefighters continued to try to corner 29 major wildfires from the Oregon border to northern Mexico, though California was almost completely free of critical fire weather warnings after days of hot, dry conditions and the threat of high winds.
Noah Berger / AP
A hand team works to save a home as the Bear Fire burns in the Berry Creek area of Butte County.
The smoke entered the vineyards of the wine country north of San Francisco and rose over the scenic Big Sur on the central coast and in the hills and mountains of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego counties in the southern part of the state.
Numerous fires also continued to burn in Washington and Oregon, and dense smoke covered much of the west coast Thursday morning, darkening the skies with dangerous air pollution.
Noah Berger / AP
Firefighters monitor the Bear Fire in Oroville.
A fire along the Oregon border destroyed 150 homes near the Happy Camp community and one person was confirmed dead, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said. About 400 more homes were threatened.
The fire that raged in the village of Berry Creek, population 525, incinerated countless houses.
Noah Berger / AP
The fires left a path of devastation in Butte County, California.
Fallon, who had driven from the San Francisco Bay Area after hearing that the Butlers were missing Wednesday morning, waited with her young son and 2-year-old daughter with dozens of evacuees gathered at a fairgrounds in the little town of Gridley, shaking in the morning. cold.
Among them was Douglas Johnsrude, who packed up his eight dogs and fled his home in the Feather Falls community on Tuesday.
Johnsrude said he assumed his home’s caravan burned down, which would be the second time he’s lost his home in a fire. He inherited his mother’s house after her death, but it was destroyed in a fire in 2017.
Frederic Larson / AP
The Golden Gate Bridge is seen at 11 a.m. Wednesday in San Francisco, amid a smoky orange hue caused by the ongoing wildfires.
“The reason I haven’t rebuilt there is because I knew it was going to happen again. And guess what? It happened again, ”he said. “Seeing the smoke and the flames and everything else is unreal. It’s like an apocalypse or something. “
Butte County spokeswoman Amy Travis described the evacuation center as a waiting area as officials line hotel rooms for families displaced by the fire amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Noah Berger / AP
Firefighters watch the Bear Fire approach.
“Covid has changed the way we shelter,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of hotel rooms here in Butte County, and a lot of them are definitely occupied with people who have already made their own hotel arrangements for evacuations.”
Fallon said he had been peppering hospitals with phone calls looking for his grandparents.
His daughter, Ava, does not understand what is happening. She thinks they are camping. The girl usually talks to her great-grandmother two or three times a day.
“I am going round and round. I have so much anxiety. I’m really worried about my grandparents, ”Fallon said. “I hope they are up there sitting in some water waiting to be rescued.”
