West Zone updates: Death toll rises to 10 in Butte County; destruction similar to Camp Fire
The destructive West Zone of the North Complex Fire, formerly called the Bear Fire, in Butte County settled down Wednesday night and Thursday, but the death toll rose overnight. The fire is not threatening Oroville or other densely populated areas.
The death and devastation it caused earlier this week – sweeping through the hilly foothill town of Berry Creek – was reminiscent of the horrifying Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise two years ago, just a handful of miles to the north of this week’s fire.
“We had a massive wall of fire that came in and did it everything it could to destroy everything in its path and unfortunately, there were some communities right in the way, just like what happened in Paradise and Concow during the Camp Fire,” Cal Fire spokesman Rick Carhart said Thursday.
That fire two years ago killed 86. The toll for the Bear Fire, since renamed by Cal Fire to the “North Complex West Zone,” is 9 dead and 16 missing, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office reported. (On Friday, the number was revised lower by one.)
The California Highway Patrol said two victims were found Wednesday at Bald Rock Road and Graystone Lane in Berry Creek, where one person was located inside a vehicle and a second was outside of the vehicle.
Thursday afternoon, two vehicles that appeared to have been burned in the fire sat immobile on Graystone, a dirt road near Bald Rock. Both had a red X painted on the doors. One, a small pickup, had the remnants of a burned out guitar case and melted CDs in the bed. The other, a four-door hatchback, had a large dog crate in the rear with the bodies of two small dogs that had been burned. Another, larger dog was also in the hatch area and appeared to have been burned in the fire.
Elsewhere in Berry Creek, several other burned out vehicles that appeared to have been caught in the flames while drivers were trying to flee sat on roadsides or overturned in culverts.
At least four people with critical burns were taken to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, authorities said.
Fire officials also announced Thursday afternoon that two firefighters suffered minor injuries when their crew was overrun by fire Wednesday, forcing the firefighters to deploy emergency fire shelters. The incident is under review, Cal Fire said.
6:22 p.m.: Death toll rises to 9
The bodies of six more victims were found Thursday in the Berry Creek area.
“We’re still investigating the circumstances of those deaths,” sheriff’s Capt. Derek Bell said at a Thursday press conference in Thursday.
Bell declined to give any details, saying detectives and deputies were working on identifications and notifications of next of kin. He said forensic teams from Chico State were being consulted on the identifications.
The discovery means 9 people have been killed in the fire. (On Friday, the number was revised lower by one.)
Bell said 26 people remain unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, although winds had abated, the fire remained completely uncontained and its size was pegged at 65,295 acres.
Shane Lauderdale, an operations section chief with the California Interagency Incident Management Team, said the fire was bearing down on the Big Bend area near the north side of Lake Oroville.
11 a.m.: Butte County temporarily lets indoor restaurants open
Despite Butte’s status with the state health department as a “purple” tier county with “widespread” coronavirus levels, the county’s local health office announced Thursday it is temporarily allowing restaurants to open for indoor operations “due to local impacts from wildfires.”
“The purpose of this temporary emergency measure is to help alleviate the adverse effects of the wildfire-related evacuations and severe outdoor air quality,” the county said in a news release. “Particulate matter in the air from wildfire smoke poses respiratory and cardiovascular hazards to citizens.”
The county is working with local town and city managers, saying those jurisdictions may allow restaurants to temporarily open if they chose to. But those that do so must follow the same COVID-19 protocols as counties in the “red” tier, where indoor dining is allowed: restaurants can only open to 25% their maximum capacity, tables must be 6 feet apart, and staff must wear masks, as well as customers when until they’re seated.
“Once the air quality has improved, restaurant operations will be required to resume outdoor operations only, per the State guidelines,” the county statement says.
10 a.m.: 2,000 structures destroyed
The three-week-old blaze, which flared up earlier this week in high winds, has destroyed or damaged at least 2,000 structures and continues to threaten more than 22,000 more buildings across those three counties, according to a Thursday morning update from Cal Fire.
Fire officials, however say calmer and cooler weather are reducing the fire spread on Thursday, and that there are no further evacuations contemplated at the moment.
“Fire conditions have moderated quite a bit overnight,” fire official Carhart said. “We have cooler temperatures. There is not immediate threat of new evacuation orders or warnings.”
10: a.m.: Bear Fire renamed
Cal Fire’s Butte Unit has taken command of a 70,000-acre portion of the North Complex wildfire cluster, previously all within the federal U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction. The main fire entered Butte County this week. The fire agency has also renamed this most intense portion of the fire, previously part of the Bear Fire, as a separate incident within the North Complex.
That segment, impacting Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties, is now officially called the “North Complex West Zone.”
More than 1,600 fire personnel are assigned to the West Zone, Cal Fire says. Cal Fire and the Forest Service revised their mapped size for the North Complex to 247,358 acres, down from 252,000 reported Wednesday.
9:30 a.m.: Authorities assess fire’s damage to Berry Creek
Search crews are sifting through the ruins in the Berry Creek area, a hill town with an estimated population of 1,200 that was largely destroyed Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Homes were leveled, an elementary school burned to the ground and a summer camp for pediatric cancer patients and their families — which wasn’t occupied because of the COVID-19 pandemic — sustained major damage.
9 a.m.: Paradise evacuation order lifted.
Officials on Thursday lifted a voluntary evacuation warning it issued the prior morning for the southeast corner of the town of Paradise.
Other existing evacuation orders and warnings remain in place. Yuba County, in a social media post shortly after 8:30 a.m. Thursday, said all its evacuations and road closures for the area near the Butte and Plumas county borders are still in place as officials await a situation update from fire authorities.
9 a.m. Echoes of the Camp Fire
Cal Fire spokesman Carhart said the fire reminded officials of the Camp Fire in November 2018. “It was eerily similar,” he said. “In this case, Berry Creek is a much smaller community, but lives are in upheaval now because of it.”
Much like in Paradise two years ago, firefighters on Tuesday night largely stopped fighting the fire and joined sheriff’s deputies in conducting rescue missions.
“There was a lot more of getting people out than actual firefighting. The first 24 hours, there was little ability to fight fire,” Carhart said.
Wednesday’s smoke-filled sky brought back harrowing memories for people like Alex Hurst, who‘s been living in his mom’s old mobile home about 15 miles west of Berry Creek since his Paradise house burned in 2018.
Hurst had been camping and his three kids at school when the Camp Fire evacuation order was issued, so their house burnt with all their possessions and the family cat inside, he said. He stayed up all Tuesday night watching for flames, then packed his kids’ 5x8 school pictures and a few other valuables Wednesday morning.
Five generator-powered air purifiers filtered out toxins inside the mobile home, and Hurst and his eight-year-old son Jordan were filling up emergency gas cans Wednesday afternoon. But time to prepare also meant time to worry, and time to think about what happened the last time smoke choked Butte County.
“I feel like this time we’re better prepared, but it’s bringing back a lot of trauma,” Hurst said. “It’s one thing after another. It just feels like it doesn’t end.”
The Bear Fire started as a small wildfire on the southwest corner of the larger North Complex, burning mainly in Plumas County. The cluster of fires sparked in mid-August during an intense thunderstorm that saw thousands of lightning strikes drop in the greater Bay Area, the Sacramento Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills.
This week, the Bear Fire erupted. By authorities’ estimates, it boosted the entire fire complex’s size from 40,000 acres to about 250,000 in roughly 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday morning, speed that’s almost unheard of for a California wildfire.
The fire’s wind-fueled run prompted urgent evacuation orders north of Lake Oroville and just south of the lake, to the east of the city of Oroville, which itself went under an evacuation advisory.
Lightning strikes in mid-August, followed by record-shattering heat, dry conditions and extremely gusty winds this week in Northern California, have combined for a hellish wildfire season, all in a matter of about three weeks. Over 2.5 million acres had burned through Tuesday, already making 2020 easily the largest burn in California wildfire history.
This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 9:39 AM with the headline "West Zone updates: Death toll rises to 10 in Butte County; destruction similar to Camp Fire."
