Dixie Fire: Catastrophic California Wildfire Burning for 22 Days Leaves Town in Ruins

The Dixie Fire has been burning across Butte and Plumas counties in California for 22 days. A town in California - Greenville, has been severely affected due to the continuous fire.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Dixie Fire 

Federal officials revealed the fire destroyed around 75% of the town in a Monday morning briefing, The Sacramento Bee reported.

As of early Friday morning, the Dixie Fire consumed more than 361,000 acres. The fire was about 35% contained. Presently, the fire is the sixth-largest that California has ever experienced, as per CalFire. According to Bloomberg, It was estimated that about 15,000 people have been relocated because of the Dixie Fire, and many evacuation orders are still in progress.

Eva Gorman, who owns a shop named Josefina Fine Knits, told The Sacramento Bee that the fire destroyed her store, together with a lot of historical buildings.

The fire turned a drugstore which is the oldest building in town and was built in 1860 to rubble. The owner of the historic Village Drug Co., Kevin Goss, revealed to news outlet that the entire historic downtown region was destroyed.

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Effect of the Wildfire

Doug LaMalfa, U.S. Rep. who acted for the region, on the House floor while speaking about the drought that has affected many portions of the West said: "We lost Greenville tonight. And there's just not words for how us in government haven't been able to get the job done. We will take up the fight even harder. And more so, we got to win this; we got to stop this."

On the site of the event in Greenville was Stormchaser Brandon Clement who captured proof of the destruction on the 5th of August being Thursday.

In some of the videos Brandon captured, he revealed the destruction of what he said was once a big hotel in the town that was established in the gold rush era. Brandon said the wall has seen more things than people could have thought, and it's now gone forever. 

Brandon also revealed some part of the main road that goes through the affected town and all other destruction and smoke around.

(Photo : Getty Images)

The Evacuation

He compared the ruins to what he imagined the result of a nuclear bomb would be like. Street lamps made of metal that lined the road were "wilted like lifeless flowers."

As firefighters kept battling with the blaze, they encountered another problem on top of the catastrophic fire. The problem was that some people refused to evacuate.

Operations Sections Chief, Jake Cagle, said: "It is imperative that you guys listen to these mandatory evacuations. Like I said, right now we can't protect the structures because we're trying to get people out of here because a lot of people chose to stay in here."

While firefighters put their energy into assisting individuals who didn't evacuate reach safety, businesses, homes, and cars went into the fires.

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