A wildfire ignited and is growing explosively Friday afternoon in Siskiyou County, prompting immediate and mandatory evacuations, including the entire town of Weed and surrounding communities. Cal Fire cameras connected to the AlertWildfire network showed a very large plume of smoke near Weed, a town of about 2,600 people located along Interstate 5 in Northern California about 50 miles south of the Oregon border. Cal Fire first reported the fire early Friday afternoon at 200 acres. Radio calls from the scene indicated that the fire exceeded 500 acres by 2 p.m. Multiple mandatory evacuation orders have been ordered in and near Weed, according to the Siskiyou County Zonehaven website. Mandatory zones include the area west of Interstate 5, west of Highway 97, south of Siskiyou County Highway 12A and Weed and the areas immediately north. The 2:45 p.m. fire was burning the Shastina Lake community, which has about 2,400 residents, according to radio traffic. An evacuation shelter has been set up at the Siskiyou County Fairgrounds, 1712 Fairlane Road, Yreka. Although Wendt was evacuated, some residents gathered downtown Friday afternoon as a huge plume of smoke rose in the distance. Helicopters were dropping water from above. Strong winds were blowing north, away from the city and toward the area where the lava fire burned 26,000 acres northeast of the city a year ago. Temperatures in the area hovered around 91 degrees as the fire grew amid a red flag warning issued for Siskiyou County and the far northern California region until 11 p.m. Friday. “It seems like it never stops,” Weed resident Scott Payne, 59, said, recalling the Lava and Boles fires of years past. Strong winds blowing from south to north shook trees in the city as a dark plume of smoke rose over the Carrick and Lincoln Heights subdivisions that are separated from the city by the mill property. Payne said his son Adam went to retrieve his belongings from his home in nearby Carrick and reported seeing flames 50 feet above Highway 97, one of the main thoroughfares. Another man, who declined to give his name, got into a black Ford Mustang and said his home had been destroyed. Evacuations extended until 2 p.m. as areas around Shastina Lake, Big Springs and as far north as Grenada along Interstate 5 were ordered to evacuate. Cal Fire said students at Weed Middle School have been bused to Mount Shasta High School for pickup.
‘I got out of there’: The weed mayor among the displaced
“Right now we just got an evacuation order for all of Weed,” Mayor Kim Greene said at 1:50 p.m. as she packed her belongings into her car at home. “It’s burning up north. I live in the south end but we put stuff in the car. “What I can see right now is just a lot of black smoke. They brought tankers, so planes are coming.” Greene said she was at the town’s community center when someone reported the fire and people immediately evacuated. Greene said she saw flames heading toward the driveway of a house nearby, but did not see if it had burned before she left. “I got out of there, but the flames were right on the road,” he said. The mayor said the fire apparently started near the Roseburg Forest Products plant, which employs about 140 workers. A Bee reporter at the scene saw at least one building in the mill complex burned. “It burned part of the old mill,” Green said. “Now, whether it’s burned in the mill, I don’t know.” Weed counselor Sue Tavalero, whose home was destroyed in a fire on Sept. 15, 2014, was in Medford, Oregon, when the fire broke out Friday, but said she had been told that the central part of Weed appeared to be spared and that the fire was burning north as the winds pushed it. “Downtown, I’m sure is fine,” Tavalero said. “My house is fine.”
Power outage, emergency alerts sound
There is a power outage in the area. Pacific Power, which serves the area, reported 7,625 homes and businesses without power near Weed as of 1:30 p.m. Steven Buscher was driving through Weed when the emergency broadcast system started ringing on his cell phone and “what sounded like loudspeakers telling everyone to evacuate the area immediately,” he said. “Power was out to all buildings and facilities, including gas stations and stop lights,” he said, adding that power also appeared to be out throughout nearby Mount Shasta. Basser, a resident of Hawaii, has been vacationing in the area for the past two months. “I just happened to be driving through Weed City when it all happened,” he said. Caltrans said a nearly 40-mile stretch of Highway 97, between the Highway 265 interchange in Weed through just south of the town of Macdoel, is closed because of the Mill Fire.
The Roseburg Mill has burned before
It is the second major fire in Weed since the Boles Fire destroyed 165 homes and other buildings in September 2014. While that fire only burned 516 acres, it removed about a third of the tiny town’s housing stock and destroyed some large businesses, such as Roseburg Forest Products’ veneer facility. The Roseburg mill reopened after nine months, but was again engulfed in flames Friday. “It’s burning on our property as well as the surrounding areas,” said Rebecca Taylor, a spokeswoman at the company’s headquarters in Oregon. “We don’t know how or where it started.” He added that “the factory was evacuated except for our fire patrol.” Photos on social media by photographers near the mill show a fire among the timber products. The fire appears to be burning very hot, according to heat signatures observed by the GOES-West satellite. Shelly Burgess, who lives in the Angel Valley area of the city near the Roseburg mill, said: “We looked out the window and saw a lot of smoke.” Before long, she had gathered her grandchildren and other relatives and “we piled them all in the car . … Strong winds — you have to move fast. You need to get out of there fast. We have passed the fire of Boles.’ She drove her family to Yreka to look for a place to stay. Although she believes her house didn’t burn down, her stepdaughter Rachel Greeley lost her home. This summer, the 60,000-acre McKinney Fire, burning within the Klamath National Forest farther west in Siskiyou County, ignited in July and killed four people. Ryan Lillis of The Bee contributed to this story. This story was originally published on September 2, 2022 at 1:29 pm. Michael McGough anchors the Sacramento Bee’s journalism news team, covering public safety and other local stories. A Sacramento native and Capital City resident, he interned at The Bee while attending Sacramento State, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
