When a wildfire swept across thousands of acres in Butte County on Tuesday, David Pittman didn’t panic. He packed up his family, including their 90-pound African sulcata tortoise, and headed to his sister’s house across town in Oroville, California.
That’s where he plans to stay for the next few days, at least until firefighters get the Thompson Fire, which has engulfed several homes and vehicles and forced about 26,000 people to evacuate, including Mr. Pittman, under control.
“I hate to say it, but we have experience in this kind of thing,” he said Wednesday.
Mr. Pittman, 70, is the mayor of Oroville, a small Northern California town with Gold Rush roots that sits near the state’s second-largest reservoir about 65 miles north of Sacramento. He’s also a retired local fire chief who has watched his region weather one disaster after another in recent years.
In 2017, officials ordered residents to flee Oroville as thunderous rapids from an emergency spillway at the nearby Oroville Dam threatened to overwhelm the town. The following year, in 2018, one of the deadliest wildfires in American history, the Camp Fire, killed 85 people and nearly wiped out the town of Paradise, about 20 miles north of Oroville.
In 2020, a record-breaking fire season burned millions of acres in California, including “all the way to the city of Oroville,” Pittman said. In 2021, California’s second-largest wildfire on record, the Dixie Fire, burned an area larger than New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas combined. It was sparked by damaged PG&E power lines near Oroville’s waterway, the Feather River.
Experts say the disasters are symptoms of worsening extreme weather events that have plunged the West into a near-permanent whirlwind of catastrophic flooding and devastating wildfires. This year, climate scientists have warned that a hot summer in the West could dry out vegetation that grew abundantly during a wet winter, turning what was once lush greenery into prime tinder and making the fire season dangerous.
For many Oroville residents at evacuation centers Wednesday, fleeing the wildfires is becoming routine.
Sitting in 106-degree heat outside a church shelter a few miles from the fire, Vernon Englund, 78, said it was the third time in four years he had evacuated because of wildfires.
“We’ve been evacuated enough times that we kept grab-and-go bags, and I just plugged in my RV and went,” he said. “But I probably should have been more worried than I was because the fire got closer than I ever thought it would,” he added.
For Ashlie Boocks, 22, who went to the church shelter Tuesday after seeing “ash the size of my palm” falling from the sky, it was her second evacuation in three years.
On Tuesday night, she drove to a spot where she could see the entire mountain lit up by flames. “It was just horrible,” she said. “You can see propane tanks exploding. You can hear them.”
“It’s not something that should be common,” she added.
Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest electricity provider, cut power this week to parts of Northern California, including Butte County, due to increased fire risk, including to nearly 2,000 homes and businesses in eight counties on Tuesday, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The Thompson Fire, which broke out Tuesday morning, remains small compared to major blazes in previous years. As of Wednesday night, it had burned nearly 3,600 acres of mountainous terrain near Lake Oroville and was 7 percent contained, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency. So far, eight injuries have been reported as a result of the fire. And officials have not yet said how many structures have been damaged, though the fire has consumed homes and vehicles, according to media reports.
Several water facilities across the state were affected by the evacuation orders, but there was no risk to Oroville Dam, which is the tallest dam in the United States, the California Department of Water Resources said Tuesday night.
Pittman said the extreme heat hitting the state this week, along with unpredictable winds, would make containing the fire particularly challenging. The National Weather Service said temperatures in Oroville were expected to reach 110 degrees Wednesday and even higher by the end of the week.
“We have breezes blowing up and down and pushing the fire,” he said. “The fuels are ready to burn. So the crews have a tough job.”
He added: “I’m outside and I can feel the heat through my t-shirt.”
Evacuation centers were full, he said. A large fireworks show that typically draws more than 10,000 people in Oroville was canceled to allow emergency workers to focus on fighting the blaze.
Oroville officials on Wednesday banned the use of fireworks of any kind in the city, but stopped short of banning legal sales, which local nonprofit groups have long used to raise money in the summer. In Butte County, fireworks are illegal except in the cities of Oroville, Gridley and Biggs, where those labeled “safe and sane” can be used.
“The last thing we need is for someone who bought fireworks from a local stand to do something stupid,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a news conference Tuesday night. “Don’t be stupid, don’t start a fire and don’t create more problems for us.”
The fireworks may not be as visually impressive as usual: The mayor said the smoke in downtown Oroville was at one point so thick he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Some evacuees gathered there with trailers or RVs, but many businesses were closed.
Brian Wong said his restaurant, Union Patio Bar and Grill, would remain open with a skeleton staff as employees had to manage their own evacuation orders. Evacuees would get a discount, he added.
“We’ll just do what we can,” he said. “Today is about serving the community.”
But Mr Wong, 53, said he would not be there. He plans instead to stay home with his father-in-law, where they hope to protect the property by putting out any approaching flames.
Although his home is under an evacuation order and most of his neighbors have fled, Wong said he was reluctant to do so after seeing residents in Paradise and other communities struggle to get insurance payments or other emergency assistance.
“A lot of these cases are still unresolved,” he said. “A lot of people who have properties are not going to get what they’re owed. So I really didn’t want to leave.”
He added that many of his neighbors have had to pay skyrocketing insurance premiums, while others are simply no longer insured as insurance companies have dropped coverage in many parts of California.
Wong, who has lived full-time in Oroville for more than 25 years, said he and his family took precautions recommended by fire experts to clear the property. He also packed his truck with valuables and said he was ready to leave if necessary.
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, he was still hunkered down and watching the plumes of smoke, hoping his neighborhood would be spared.
Amanda Holpuch, Jonathan Wolfe And Yan Zhuang contribution to the report.
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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