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| Topic | Some people in path of Dixie Fire brandishing guns while refusing to leave |
| DiScOrD tHe LuNaTiC 08/07/21 1:47:52 PM #1: | https://www.yahoo.com/news/dixie-fire-tears-communities-refuse-120040895.html More than three weeks after it ignited in a remote canyon, the monster Dixie fire continued to break records Friday, leapfrogging Oregons Bootleg fire to become the largest burning in the U.S. and the third largest in recorded California history. As the effects of climate change are felt more intensely worldwide, this singular blaze was raging in four counties Butte, Lassen, Plumas and Tehama and had scorched 679 square miles, an area considerably larger than the city of Los Angeles. Stoked by extreme drought, dry vegetation and gusty winds, it was burning more rapidly and behaving more erratically than even veteran firefighters could recall ever seeing. After razing the Sierra Nevada town of Greenville, the fire continued to spread and throw off spot fires Thursday, burning through the small community of Canyondam as it grew by 110,000 acres. That was more than double the 50,000 acres by which it expanded the day before, said Rick Carhart, public information officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. There have been times during the fire when pretty much every time that an ember would spot and land in grass, it was almost guaranteed to ignite and start another spot fire, he said. Firefighters were working Friday to protect homes around Lake Almanor, where fire had reached the western shore but had not yet burned to the peninsula, they said. No deaths have been reported so far in the Dixie fire, but some residents are taking risks that alarm authorities. Law enforcement has issued evacuation orders for thousands of residents whose communities were under siege, yet some are choosing to stay behind, posing more challenges. Greg Hagwood, a Plumas County supervisor, said that in the last 72 hours, as fire has swept through or threatened small mountain towns including Greenville, the evacuations have grown tense in some cases, residents have met law enforcement with weapons. They are met with people who have guns and [are] saying, Get off my property and you are not telling me to leave, he said. In response to those who flatly refused to evacuate, he said, deputies were asking for next-of-kin information so they would have someone to notify if the holdouts died. n Wednesday, authorities were forced to establish a temporary refuge area at a high school baseball field for people who had to flee or be rescued after they chose to stay behind in Chester. Some firefighters had to stop beating back flames to take people there, officials said. Such undertakings carry a cost, said Capt. Mitch Matlow, public information officer on the Dixie fire. Then the fire can advance in areas where we might have otherwise been able to stop it, and the lives of the firefighters and the residents that they are moving to protect are put at increased risk, he said. On Thursday, authorities arrested three people who stayed behind in an evacuation zone in the Lassen County town of Westwood. All three were taken to jail, cited and released two on suspicion of entering or remaining in an evacuation area, and one on suspicion of loitering on private property, said Lisa Bernard, public information officer with the Lassen County Sheriffs Office. When we ask people to leave their homes, we take our duty to protect their property very seriously, Bernard wrote in an email. Those who do stay behind are required to shelter in place inside their homes, and those who are found roaming the streets risk arrest, she said. Hagwood said that as the former sheriff of Plumas County and a resident of Quincy, its historic heart, he has been on both sides of evacuation orders issuing them and being subject to them. A few years ago during the Minerva fire, he was forced to issue an order that covered his own home, as well as his parents up the street. Hagwood said the emotional intensity of evacuations on law enforcement and residents cant be overestimated, especially in rural areas where everybody seems to know one another. You are talking about peoples homes, their property, everything they have worked for for their entire lives and sometimes generations, Hagwood said. Having the government, whether its local, state or federal, coming in and telling you you have to walk away from it is going to be met with some pushback. If you are in a large metropolitan area, you are making decisions that are affecting people youve never met, that you will never see, he added. Here, you are going to see them at the grocery store. You are going to be standing next to them at your kids athletic events going into the future. --- "Life itself is only a vision, a dream. Nothing exists save empty space and you, and you are but a thought." ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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