Police chief loses home in California blaze

Crews stretched to their limits across the state are fighting flames that have claimed the lives of two firefighters and six civilians. Redding Fire Department Inspector Jeremy Stoke was also killed battling the blaze, officials said.

The death toll from the fire climbed to five after the bodies of Melody Bledsoe, 70, and her great-grandchildren, James Robert, 5, and Emily Roberts, 4, were recovered from Bledsoe’s home in Redding, relatives said.

“We didn’t think the fire was going to come here, so we didn’t really take things out like everyone else that was scrambling at the last minute to get out when we saw fire on the ridge”, Dominic Galvin said. He rushed back to his home to try to retrieve possessions but by the time he arrived, authorities had closed the road.

“It’s a hard fire to deal with”, Austin said, noting the weather was hot and the terrain rugged.

Still, he agreed with other experts that say the destruction was also the result of more people living closer to fire-prone areas. The two fires, burning 30 miles (50 kilometers) apart, started Friday and were threatening more than 350 buildings.

Like the fires in Santa Rosa and Ventura previous year, wind was a major contributor to the blaze’s spread.

Teague says they nearly had to abandon rescue efforts just before dawn.

Search crews, meanwhile, sifted through the ashes of what used to be the family’s neighborhood in Redding, Calif., looking for something much worse.

He took hundreds of photos, recorded video and texted his wife.

“With a heavy heart we are sad to inform you all that Mel and the great grand babies were confirmed to be in the home”, the family said on a GoFundMe page. He was the second bulldozer operator killed in a California blaze in less than two weeks.

Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the fire doubled in size.

Although well above average for the same period over the past decade, it is down from 5.27 million acres (2.13 million hectares) in the first seven months of 2017.

More than 4,000 structures were threatened by the fire, officials said.

The Carr Fire, which is the largest of 17 wildfires burning in California, has destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 structures in Shasta and Trinity Counties, about 150 miles north of Sacramento. “We are seeing fire whirls – literally what can be described as a tornado”, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) chief Ken Pimlott told media. It was said to be at 10 percent containment.

“However, the possibility does exist that there may be far more grave situations for some of them”, Cogle said. The National Weather Service declared a red flag warning for high temperatures and winds and low humidity, effective until 8 AM Monday.

And due to the ongoing fire-fighting efforts, the City of Redding and the California Division of Drinking Water request that all City of Redding residents and businesses, especially those not directly affected by the fire, please conserve water.

Some 536 structures have been destroyed, with a count by the Associated Press finding that at least 300 of those are homes.

An elderly woman and her two great-grandchildren perished in the devastating Northern California wildfire that raged into its fourth day on Sunday.

Located on the western side of Redding, KRCR-TV was forced to go off the air and evacuate their studio in the middle of a Thursday night broadcast.

Anna Noland, who was evacuated twice in three days, learned Friday that she had lost her home. She said she nearly grabbed a box of mementos – trinkets, diaries, ticket stubs from her favorite movies – but then thought it would take up too much room in the vehicle.

On Saturday, it pushed southwest of Redding, the largest city in the region, toward the tiny communities of Ono, Igo and Gas Point.