The extreme weather conditions have fueled wildfires in Northern California.
“I’m in shock. I want to cry. I’m looking at my neighbors’ places, and they’re all gone, and I’m still here,” Middletown homeowner Jim Maurer said. “We’re just shaking our heads.”
The AP reports: The fire and another in the Gold Rush country of the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 120 miles to the southeast, are the worst of a dozen burning in the state. Between them, they have destroyed at least 720 homes and hundreds of other structures and displaced 23,000 people, fire officials said.
Citing dry conditions from four years of drought, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, called this summer’s fires some of the most volatile he’s seen in 30 years of emergency response work.
California Wildfires