California firefighters on Saturday battled a fast-moving fire that erupted the previous afternoon about 230 miles north of Sacramento, injuring several people and prompting the mandatory evacuation of thousands of residents.
The Mill Fire, which has devastated 4,254 acres of land, was listed as 25 percent contained as of Saturday evening, according to Cal Fire. It was first detected Friday afternoon in Weed, Calif., a largely rural town of just under 2,900 located 40 miles south of the Oregon border, according to the state fire department.
Three people were injured and 50 structures were destroyed, with 132 total structures affected by the fire, Cal Fire said. “Weather continues to be hot and dry,” it said in an incident update Saturday afternoon.
The fire expanded significantly faster than many other blazes that have burned through fire-racked California in recent days. Fire units from the Sacramento and Placer County area have also been deployed to support operations around Weed, which logged temperatures of above 90 degrees in the late afternoon.
Video footage posted on social media showed flames ravaging residential areas, burning forested land and destroying at least one industrial building in the Weed area. Municipal leaders and California fire officials could not be reached for comment late Friday, but the Associated Press reported that several people had been injured. The mayor of Weed told the Los Angeles Times that the fire appeared to have started at a lumber mill close to the town.
A nearby fire that began around 6 p.m., dubbed the Mountain Fire, was concurrently raging in Gazelle, Calif., 10 miles northwest of Weed. That fire was 5 percent contained and had burned through 4,812 acres as of 10 p.m. local time Saturday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County, where the towns of Weed and Gazelle are located. High temperatures, extreme drought conditions, dry fuels and high winds were responsible for the scale of the recent fires, he said in his emergency proclamation. More than 5,800 residents in Weed and the surrounding area have been evacuated.
California and many parts of the western United States have been toiling through an intense, long-duration heat event that weather experts said could get worse over the weekend. Fire officials overseeing efforts to fight two earlier fires in Southern California this past week blamed the heat wave and low humidity for those blazes.
Mark Johnson and Bryan Pietsch contributed to this report.
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