![]() Google Street View/JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Imagesīut Greenville’s commercial district was gone. The burned-down Sierra Lodge in Greenville, Calif., after the Dixie Fire swept through the area in August 2021. The wind, luckily, was fairly calm and once the fire blazed through Main Street, it petered out, saving most of the nearby homes. When it was clear the area was doomed, shopkeepers began throwing their expensive wares out of windows and doors to salvage what they could. Wet blankets placed on the structures only temporarily held off the flames. The fire broke out in one of the Main Street buildings and within an hour, the stretch was engulfed. In the 1850s, the first white settlers arrived in the region to mine the mountains for gold and natural resources, but a town didn’t coalesce until the 1860s.īarely two decades old, the settlement experienced its first great conflagration in 1881. ![]() JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Imagesįor centuries, the Mountain Maidu tribe lived in the valley, building their homes partly into the soil to keep the dwelling insulated during the snowy winter months. The Dixie fire was 361,812 acres and 35% contained as of Thursday evening, making it California’s largest wildfire of the season so far and the sixth-largest wildfire in the state’s recorded history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.Buildings burn as the Dixie Fire tears through downtown Greenville, California on August 4, 2021. Most recently, Shasta County’s district attorney said that the utility is “criminally liable” for its role in sparking the Zogg fire, which killed four people last year, but that her office has not yet decided on what charges may be filed. PG&E equipment has already been identified as the source of some of California’s most destructive wildfires, including the 2018 Camp fire, which saw the company plead guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter. “Climate change impacts have led to more frequent heat waves, extreme drought, and millions of dead and dying trees, which have created elevated wildfire risk.” “The fires we’ve seen this summer are not wind-driven events that we typically see in the fall they are primarily dry fuel-driven events,” Scott Strenfel, director of PG&E meteorology, said in a statement. Hulls of cars lined the street, reduced to charred tanks and melted wheels. Flames still flickered where they could find perches on something left to burn. The town was a smoking ruin, its sign melted so that the lettering crackled like glaze. The road to Greenville was still on fire Thursday night. At least 67 structures were destroyed, with more than 12,000 under threat, according to authorities. “Everybody who didn’t believe it in Greenville is now a climate refugee.”Ĭrews were still assessing the damage, but it’s believed that three-quarters of the town’s buildings were consumed, fire spokeswoman Serena Baker said Thursday morning. Authorities said the rapid advance of flames was fed by gusty winds and historically dry conditions, with the National Weather Service issuing a red flag advisory warning of severe fire risk. Greenville, nestled in dense forests southeast of Lake Almanor, was decimated Wednesday when the massive Dixie fire swept through three weeks after it ignited near a Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
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