Residents Flee as Fatal Carr Fire Threatens Northern California City

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Smoke rose Thursday from the wildfire as it neared Redding, Calif. The fire later surged into the city, which is about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.CreditCalifornia Highway Patrol, via Associated Press

By Austin Ramzy and Matthew Haag

July 27, 2018

A rapidly expanding wildfire surged into parts of the Northern California city of Redding and surrounding areas late Thursday, sending residents racing to escape the inferno.

A privately hired bulldozer operator, who was fighting the fire, was killed, and by Friday morning the fast-moving blaze had destroyed 15 buildings and was threatening nearly 500 more, the authorities said.

Early Friday, state officials expanded a mandatory evacuation area for the fire, known as the Carr Fire, ordering people to leave immediately in the cities of in Summit and Shasta Lake, which are about seven miles northwest of Redding and have more than 10,000 residents combined. People in areas near the Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River were also told to evacuate.

“This fire is extremely dangerous and moving with no regard for what’s in its path,” said Bret Gouvea, the incident commander for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Images posted on social media showed orange and red flames glowing against the night sky. Long lines of vehicles backed up as people tried to flee parts of Redding, a city of 92,000 people about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.

Some firefighters and civilians were injured, but the exact number and the extent of their injuries were not yet known, Chief Gouvea said.

At 10:30 p.m. Thursday, a news anchor at KRCR-TV, an ABC-affiliated television station in Redding, abruptly announced that the station was under evacuation orders.

“Right now we are being evacuated and that’s why we are kind of closing out right now,” said the anchor, Allison Woods. “We are going to leave the station because it is now unsafe to be here.”

The fire was started Monday by “mechanical failure of a vehicle” in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, the California fire protection agency, also known as Cal Fire, said in a report, without elaborating.

By late Wednesday the fire had engulfed 6,700 acres. It expanded to 20,000 acres by Thursday morning and to more than 28,000 acres by Thursday evening, with just 6 percent of it contained. Nearly 1,750 firefighters with 110 fire trucks and 10 helicopters were battling the blaze.

Hot, dry weather fueled the fire. The temperature peaked at 113 degrees in Redding on Thursday and hovered around 90 late Thursday night.

“Tonight it blew up and blew into the city limits of the city of Redding,” said Scott McLean, a spokesman for Cal Fire.

The blistering temperatures, low humidity and steady wind that have driven the fire were expected to continue on Friday.

Multiple structures were on fire on the west side of the city, and the speed of the blaze’s expansion recalled the deadly wildfires north of San Francisco last year.

“This fire is just extremely dynamic,” Mr. McLean said. “We really haven’t seen anything like this except for last year on the Tubbs.”

The Tubbs fire, wind-driven blazes that ravaged Sonoma and Napa Counties, killed 22 people and destroyed more than 5,500 structures, making it the most destructive wildfire in California history.

That disaster raised questions about emergency alert and evacuation systems for fast-moving fires. Sonoma, Napa and other counties used alert systems that send text messages to mobile phones. But those warnings generally go only to the people who have signed up to receive them, and the fires knocked out cellular service in many areas.

The authorities then described a chaotic scramble to evacuate residents. Similar situations were reported on social media on Thursday night in the Redding area.

In addition to the Carr fire, large wildfires are burning in Central and Southern California. The Ferguson fire caused the largest closing of Yosemite National Park in 30 years, and the Cranston fire is only 5 percent contained in the San Jacinto Mountains in Southern California.

A man suspected of starting the Cranston fire was arrested on Wednesday night and charged with five counts of arson to wildland.

Inyoung Kang and Terence McGinley contributed reporting.