“We need to acknowledge, just straight up, these are climate-induced wildfires,” Newsom said in a video. The local post office had been reduced to a few walls and rubble. The skies were an ominous ochre from smoke. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, spent Saturday in Greenville surveying damage. Already, it’s ravaged the small town of Greenville, where only about a quarter of structures have been rescued from fiery demolition. The Dixie fire continues to tear through California and has become the largest single fire in state history. “PG&E’s responses will not be deemed as an admission by PG&E that it caused any fire, but they will serve as a starting point for discussion,” Alsup wrote.
#DIXIE FIRE UPDATE CONTAINMENT SERIES#
In recent years, the beleaguered utility has already been criminally prosecuted and driven into bankruptcy after its equipment ignited a series of harmful or deadly fires. He also requested a filing that documents every blaze PG&E started or is suspected of starting during this wildfire season. US District Judge William Alsup ordered PG&E to submit drone surveillance, a description of vegetation in the area, and an explanation of its involvement in starting the Fly fire, which has merged with the Dixie fire. We need help.”Īlthough the fire’s cause remains under investigation, Pacific Gas & Electric – a California-based utility company – has admitted that its equipment may have been linked to the devastation. We have people camped out in the woods with children. We are a very small rural area, and we feel like we’re on our own. The fire has burned a total of 963,195 acres, the largest single wildfire in California history.
“This fire has been a beast,” evacuee Jessi Roberts told the San Francisco Chronicle. According to Cal Fire, the Dixie Fire is now 90 contained.
Some have been tormented by conflicting information about whether their properties are still standing. Pacific Gas & Electric has said it may have started when a tree fell on one of the utility’s power lines.Although no deaths have been reported, thousands of locals have been forced to flee their homes. The cause of the blaze, which has now spread to an area larger than the city of Houston, Texas, remains under investigation. Five other missing people were confirmed found that day.
On Saturday, the Plumas County sheriff’s office said it had received descriptions of five people considered missing in Greenville and was searching for them. “We knew we didn’t get enough rainfall and fires could happen, but we didn’t expect a monster like this,” local resident Kesia Studebaker told The Associated Press news agency. In June, experts told Al Jazeera that US President Joe Biden should take up an ambitious, long-term strategy to mitigate wildfires fuelled by climate change, including providing more funding to help authorities thin out dense forests that pose a fire hazard.īack in California, the Dixie Fire this week destroyed all of downtown Greenville, an old mining town about 257km (160 miles) north of Sacramento. Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. A burned vehicle with melted tyre rims is seen after the passing of the Dixie Fire near the town of Canyondam on August 7 Heatwaves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the western United States. Only the August Complex Fire, which consumed more than 404,700 hectares (1 million acres) in California in August of last year, was bigger. Smoke shading from fires in the region will reduce fire intensity, increasing the potential for crews to make headway on building containment lines,” officials said in a statement (PDF).Īt least 404 structures have been destroyed by the fire so far, the statement also said, while more than 13,800 others are under threat. “Fire activity is expected to decrease through the morning hours. The still-raging Dixie Fire in northern California is now the second-largest in the state’s history, officials said on Sunday, days after the blaze destroyed an historic town and forced the evacuation of thousands of people from the area.Ĭalifornia fire authorities said in a Sunday morning update that the wildfire now spanned 187,562 hectares (463,477 acres) and remained only 21 percent contained, but that favourable conditions would allow crews to battle the flames.
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