Dixie fire burns 550 more homes, becoming one of most destructive in California history

Guardian staff and agencies
·3 min read

The Dixie fire raging through northern California has destroyed another 550 homes, becoming one of the most destructive in state history.

Related: California man charged with killing his children claimed he was ‘enlightened by QAnon’, FBI says

The fire, the largest wildfire burning in the US, has all but leveled the town of Greenville and is still threatening a dozen small towns in the Sierra Nevada.

It has already burned more than 2,000 sq km (790 sq miles), officials said on Wednesday, and has destroyed more than 1,000 single-family homes since erupting in mid-July. It is 30% contained.

The fire is one of 11 burning across California. Its cause remains under investigation. The utility Pacific Gas & Electric has said the blaze may have been sparked when a tree fell on one of its power lines.

A judge on Wednesday denied bail to a former professor from California who authorities accuse of starting the smaller Ranch fire in Lassen county. The man denies setting the fire, according to court documents.

Hot, dry weather throughout the US west is driving flames through more than a dozen states. A wildfire bearing down on rural south-eastern Montana towns on Thursday forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

The Richard Spring fire advanced across Montana’s sparsely populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, and displayed extreme behavior, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The blaze, which was only 15% surrounded, began on Sunday and powerful gusts spread the flames across more than more than 2,000 sq km (780 sq miles).

By nightfall, the fire had crept within about 3.22 km (2 miles) of the evacuated town of Lame Deer, leaping over a highway where officials had hoped to stop it.

Rancher Jimmy Peppers sat on his horse east of town, watching an orange glow grow near the site of his house.

“I didn’t think it would cross the highway so I didn’t even move my farm equipment,” said Peppers, who spent the afternoon herding his cattle on to a neighbor’s pasture closer to town. “I don’t know if I’ll have a house in the morning.”

Horse riders surrounded by smoke from the Richard Spring fire as it moves toward Ashland, Montana.
Horse riders surrounded by smoke from the Richard Spring fire as it moves toward Ashland, Montana. Photograph: Mike Clark/AP

By late Wednesday a second fire was closing in on Lame Deer from the west, while the Richard Spring fire raged to the east.

Drought conditions have left trees, grass and brush bone-dry throughout many western states, leaving them ripe for ignition. At the same time, California and some other states were facing flows of monsoonal moisture that were too high to bring rain but could create thunderstorms, bringing new fire risks from dry lightning and erratic winds.

The conditions prompted three national forests to close the Trinity Alps wilderness area, a half-million-acre expanse of granite peaks, lakes and trails, into November.

Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. California’s five largest wildfires in history have all occurred in the last three years, burning more than 2.5m acres and destroying 3,700 structures.

The Dixie fire is second in size to last year’s August Complex fire, in which several smaller fires merged to make one massive conflagration.

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