Fire season is here again, and the Dixie Fire started with quite the bang as it burns 100,000 acres in just under 24 hours. With such a rapid burn, the fire is now the third-largest in the history of the state of California. The Dixie Fire increased to 432,813 acres by Friday morning.
Located 280 miles northeast of San Francisco near the town of Canyondam, the Dixie Fire continues to burn. It has already destroyed several homes and businesses throughout the Canyondam area, and fierce winds fanning the flames threaten nearby settlements.
“We’re seeing truly frightening fire behavior and I don’t know how to overstate that. We have a lot of veteran firefighters who have observed for 20 years and have never seen conditions like this especially day after day. We really are in uncharted territory.” – Chris Carlton, the supervisor for Plumas National Forest said in a recent briefing. [source]
Canyondam isn’t the only town within the range of the Dixie Fire. Some reports from Thursday evening stated that the community of Chester has so far escaped damage.
Dixie Fire Damage Report
The Dixie Fire started on Friday, July 14, near the Cresta Dam in the Feather River Canyon. So far, the fire has destroyed 91 houses and buildings (according to Cal Fire) and triggered thousands of evacuations. Greenville went up in flames Wednesday night, destroying much of their historic Main Street, their downtown area, and scorched several surrounding homes and businesses. The worst part is that people in these areas have only started recovering from the 2018 wildfires.
Unfortunately, the fire seems to grow every day, and conditions can worsen things over the coming days. Researcher Craig Clements of San Jose State Univerity’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory stated that the current low humidity and high winds would likely fuel the flames.
“Single digit humidity … that’s really not good with these winds … that’s bad. This is looking crazy.” – Craig Clements, director of San Jose State University’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory and a professor. [source]
Currently, there are nearly 5000 fire fighting personnel fighting the blaze, and, once again, PG&E said its equipment may have started it.
“Yesterday we saw extreme fire growth. The fire was averaging about a half-mile an hour. It has the potential for getting bad before getting better. As the cold front passes over we’re going to see very erratic wind behavior. We have expectations that we’ll have winds in all directions over the fire today.” – Mitch Matlow, spokesperson with the multi-agency team managing the fire.” – Mitch Matlow, spokesperson with the multi-agency team managing the fire. [source]
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