California wildfire burn homes, force towns to flee: Report
Weed, Lake Shastina and Edgewood were placed under mandatory evacuation orders, children from a local high school were sent to safety, and a large animal and livestock evacuation shelter was set up.
FollowThousands of people were on Friday ordered to evacuate their homes in northern California as a wildfire spread rapidly across more than 1,000 acres in extremely hot conditions.
Footage from a local news channel showed several buildings ablaze in the so-called Mill Fire, which the Siskiyou county fire department warned was growing at a "dangerous rate of spread."
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Weed, Lake Shastina and Edgewood were placed under mandatory evacuation orders, children from a local high school were sent to safety, and a large animal and livestock evacuation shelter was set up.
"Immediate threat to life. This is a lawful order to leave now. The area is lawfully closed to public access," said the evacuation order.
The inferno came as California and parts of Nevada and Arizona broiled under another day of blistering temperatures.
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Temperatures in many areas have risen above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) due to a persistent bubble of high pressure sitting over the region.
In its daily bulletin, the National Weather Service said, "September is off to a searing start in the West with record breaking temperatures and fire weather expected to expand and settle over that part of the country this Labor Day weekend."
Siskiyou is part of a largely forested and relatively less populous region of northern California that has been hit badly by wildfires in recent years.
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In 2014, more than 150 buildings were destroyed in the town of Weed by the Boles fire. According to scientists, global warming, which is being driven chiefly by the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, is making natural weather variations more extreme.
A persistent drought lasting more than two decades has also left much of the American West baked and tinder dry, leaving it vulnerable to hotter, faster and more destructive wildfires.
