Woman killed, 400 homes destroyed by California wildfire
LAKEPORT – A Northern California wildfire ranked as the most destructive to hit the drought-stricken US West this year has killed one woman and burned some 400 homes to the ground, fire officials said, and they expect the property toll to climb.
The so-called Valley Fire erupted on Saturday and spread quickly to a cluster of small communities in the hills and valleys north of Napa County's wine-producing region, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents. An elderly, disabled woman who was unable to flee her home as flames bore down on Saturday evening died as it burned to the ground.
“The resident was apparently unable to self-evacuate and responders were unable to make it to her home before the fire engulfed the structure,” said Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Lieutenant Steve Brooks. Evacuated residents recounted chaotic ordeals of having to flee their homes through gauntlets of flame.
“That whole place was ablaze. It was like Armageddon,” said Steve Johnson, a 37-year-old construction worker from Southern California who was visiting his mother in the fire-ravaged community of Hidden Valley Lake. "We were literally driving through the flames.”
Johnson and his mother safely escaped and spent Sunday night at a high school gymnasium converted into an evacuation center. By Monday afternoon, the blaze had devoured about 61,000 acres (24,690 hectares) of tinder-dry forests, brush and grasslands, and was only about 5 per cent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
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