He found the body of one of his two cats, which he buried. It’s just wasteland, devastation,” Simms said. “The house, the guest house and the RV were gone. He went back to check on his property Tuesday and found it was destroyed. Simms, a 65-year-old retiree, bought his property six years ago as a second home with access to hunting and fishing. Their names haven’t been officially confirmed, which could take several days, said Courtney Kreider, a spokesperson with the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office. “But when you hear my next-door neighbors died. “I don’t get emotional about stuff and material things,” Simms said. Two were a married couple who lived up the road. The progress against the flames came too late for many people in the scenic hamlet of Klamath River, which was home to about 200 people before the fire reduced many of the homes to ashes, along with the post office, community center and other buildings.Īt an evacuation center Wednesday, Bill Simms said that three of the four victims were his neighbors. The contractor's injuries were not life-threatening. A private contractor in a pickup truck who was helping the firefighting effort was hurt when a bridge gave out and washed away the vehicle, Kreider said. The latest storm also brought concerns about possible river flooding and mudslides. A drenching rain Tuesday dumped up to 3 inches (7.6 cm) on some eastern sections of the blaze but most of the fire area got next to nothing, said Dennis Burns, a fire behavior analyst. More storms earlier this week proved a mixed blessing. The blaze was driven at first by fierce winds ahead of a thunderstorm cell. More than 100 homes and other buildings have burned and four bodies have been found, including two in a burned car in a driveway. The blaze broke out last Friday and has charred nearly 92 square miles (238 square kilometers) of forestland, left tinder-dry by drought. “The heat, the dry conditions, along with afternoon breezes, that’s the kind of thing that could keep the fire pretty active,” he said Thursday. Weekend temperatures could reach triple digits as the region dries out again, said meteorologist Brian Nieuwenhuis with the National Weather Service office in Medford, Oregon. “This is a sleeping giant right now,” said Darryl Laws, a unified incident commander on the blaze. But as the clouds clear and humidity levels drops in the coming days, the fire could roar again, authorities warned.
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The fire didn’t advance much at midweek, following several days of brief but heavy rain from thunderstorms that provided cloudy, damper weather. Bulldozers and hand crews were making progress carving firebreaks around much of the rest of the blaze, fire officials said.Īt the fire's southeastern corner, evacuation orders for sections of Yreka, home to about 7,800 people, were downgraded to warnings, allowing residents to return home but with a caution that the situation remained dangerous.Ībout 1,300 people remained under evacuation orders, officials said at a community meeting Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, in California, forecasters warned Thursday that spiking temperatures and plunging humidity levels could create conditions for further wildfire growth.Īfter five days of no containment, the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border was 10% surrounded by Wednesday evening.
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The cause of the fire was under investigation. Homes, infrastructure and crops were threatened. The State Fire Marshal’s office said the blaze had burned through about 3.9 square miles (10.1 square kilometers). Autopsy Confirms Body Found in Reservoir Is Kiely Rodni