Jane Coolidge and her husband, Bruce, were driving past the town of Weed, Calif., on Friday when they saw a large amount of smoke.
The truck was hit by debris as it dropped onto the highway. Spot fires were started by falling material on both sides of the road.
Coolidge said it was frightening.
The Mill fire appears to have started near the property of Roseburg Forest Products and spread to nearby homes in the historically Black community of Lincoln Heights.
She said that it quickly became an urban conflagration as flames raced from house to house.
She said that fire is not in the wilderness anymore. Inside the city limits, it is.
Rebecca Taylor, communications director for the Springfield, Ore.-based wood products company, said that the old building that burned was used to store spare parts for Roseburg's active veneer plant. It's not known if the fire started at the building or nearby.
As of Saturday afternoon, authorities did not know how many homes had been destroyed.
The growing toll of wildfire in California is underscored by the lightening speed with which the Mill fire swept into a residential community. Major property losses have been brought after fires in wine country, Paradise, and other places.
The time was 6:28 pm. State officials reported that the fire was 25% contained.
The governor declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County after the fire forced thousands of people to leave their homes.
Information about the nature of the injuries and the condition of the wounded were not available.
The community of Lincoln Heights has been destroyed by the fire.
Lincoln Heights was once home to a thriving black community.
Black workers from the South came to Weed in the 1920s to work at the Long-Bell lumber company.
Some workers came directly to Weed from Louisiana, while others took more circuitous migration routes from other parts of the South.
Weed is a company-owned town with a black community, according to a thesis written by a former Weed teacher.
Two churches, a cemetery, a hotel, apartment house and club were built by Black workers and their families in Lincoln Heights.
It was like returning to the South, according to a Times reporter.
In the mid-1920s, an estimated 1,000 Black people lived in Weed, accounting for about one sixth of the town's population.
The population of Weed has dwindled with the decline of the timber industry. In 2020, Weed had a population of 2,662, of which 11 were black.
Someone ran into the community center and yelled that a fire had begun across the street. She said that by the time she got to the parking lot, the flames had jumped Railroad Avenue and were moving towards Lincoln Heights.
The fire moved towards Lincoln Park, melting some playground equipment but sparing structures and trees, before skirting the green space and burning more homes in the Lake Shastina area.
It is not known how the homes and ranches in the two communities did. The town had no internet or phone lines, so it was difficult to get information.
The fire, which started hours later in more remote and rugged timberland about 12 miles to the northwest, was 5% contained as of Saturday night. Most of the people who were ordered to leave were in the community of Gazelle.
The fires were caused by wind, high temperatures, low relative humidity, and vegetation that was desiccated by the ongoing drought, according to Capt. Robert Foxworthy.
Climate change has made this the driest 22-year period in at least 1200 years.
A red flag warning was issued by the National Weather Service on Friday due to strong winds and low humidity. He said that Weed had a temperature of 98 degrees.
All that contributed to rapid growth.
He said that the activity on the Mill fire moderated overnight into Saturday as winds let up and the weather cools. The Mountain fire was burning actively.
Two fires have different concerns, according to Foxworthy. There is a fire in a populated area. The Mountain fire is in a rugged area.
The temperature was expected to drop by about 10 degrees Saturday and possibly meet heat advisory criteria by Tuesday. He said that the dry conditions were expected to last through Sunday.
Siskiyou County has had a difficult summer. The McKinney fire started in the national forest near the border with Oregon and quickly grew into the state's largest of the season, killing four people and destroying 185 structures.
Several lawsuits have been filed on behalf of residents who claim that the fire was started by the electrical equipment of the company.
The biggest fire in the county was the Yeti fire, which burned nearly 8,000 acres and prompted warnings for people in the Happy Camp area.
The parts of Siskiyou County that were damaged by the Lava fire were not the only ones. East of Weed.
More than 150 buildings in Weed were destroyed in the Boles fire, which a man eventually pleaded guilty to.
She said that all of us have some sort of post traumatic stress disorder. We get out when we hear fire.
David Zahniser wrote for the Times.
The story was originally published in the LA Times.
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