The Mill Fire started shortly before 1 p.m. Friday just north of Weed, a town of about 2,600 people 250 miles (402 kilometers) north of San Francisco. The flames rushed to the Lincoln Heights neighborhood where a significant number of homes were burned and residents were forced to flee for their lives. Two people were taken to Mercy Medical Center Mount Shasta. One was in stable condition and the other was taken to UC Davis Medical Center, which has a burn unit. Cal Fire Siskiyou Unit Chief Phil Anzo said crews were working around the clock to protect structures in Weed and a subdivision to the east known as Carrick Addition. “A lot is at stake in that Mill Fire,” he said. “There’s a lot of communities, a lot of homes there.” Weather conditions improved overnight and firefighters were able to contain 20 percent, but another fire, the Mountain Fire, that broke out Friday northwest of Weed grew significantly. No injuries or loss of buildings were reported from the fire. The causes of both fires are under investigation. Anzo estimated that about 100 homes and other buildings were lost in the Mill Fire. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County and said he received a federal grant “to ensure the availability of vital resources to fight the fire.” Naomi Vogelsang, 46, may have lost her 10-year-old English bulldog, Bella, to the Mill Fire. Vogelsang said she was sleeping on a couch when a friend told her to leave immediately. “Everything was black,” he said Saturday. “Things were exploding, you couldn’t see in front of your face.” A firefighter picked her up and put her in a fire truck to safety, but her dog, who turns 11 next month, wasn’t following her. The houses around her burned down. Vogelsang said she slept on a bench in Weed Friday night because she couldn’t drive to the evacuation center. On Saturday morning, she planned to go to a casino with the $20 she had left. Her luck couldn’t get much worse, she said. “My dog was my everything,” she said. “I just feel like I’ve lost everything that mattered.” California is in deep drought as it heads into what is traditionally the worst of the wildfire season. Scientists say climate change has made the West hotter and drier over the past three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. Over the past five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history. Weed has seen three major fires since 2014. The latest fire started at or near Roseburg Forest Products, which manufactures wood products. Evacuation orders quickly went into effect for 7,500 people. Yvasha Hilliard said she was at home in Lincoln Heights when she heard “a big boom” and ran outside to see her neighbor’s house on fire. “It was like fire coming out of the sky,” he said. “It was awful.” Hilliard said her home was among those burned. “We lost everything,” he said. Dr. Deborah Heiger, medical director at Shasta View Nursing Center, said all 23 patients at the facility had to be evacuated. Twenty went to local hospitals while three stayed at her home, where hospital beds had been set up. Rebecca Taylor, director of communications for Springfield, Ore.-based Roseburg, said a large vacant building on the edge of the company’s property burned. All workers were evacuated and no one reported injuries, he said. Around the time the fire started, power outages were reported affecting about 9,000 customers, and several thousand remained without power late into the evening because of the fire, according to power company PacifiCorp. It was the third major wildfire in as many days in California, which is now reeling under a heat wave that was expected to push temperatures above the 100-degree mark in many areas during Labor Day. Thousands of people were also ordered to flee Wednesday from a wildfire in Castaic, north of Los Angeles, and a wildfire in eastern San Diego County near the Mexican border, where two people were badly burned and several homes were destroyed. All evacuation orders were lifted on Friday. The Mill Fire was burning about an hour’s drive from the Oregon state line. It was just about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of where the McKinney fire — the state’s deadliest of the year — broke out in late July. It killed four people and destroyed dozens of houses.
Associated Press reporters Olga R. Rodriguez and Janie Har in San Francisco contributed.
