Shasta Lake Fire Burns 67 Homes

A wildfire started by a lawnmower burned at least 67 homes on the south shore of Shasta Lake and raged out of control Thursday, charring more than 7,500 acres and forcing the evacuation of more than 400 residents.

“It just kind of goes forever and ever and ever,” said Ron Smith, an assistant chief with the Bella Vista Fire Department. “There are red spires in the center and in the front a wall of fire, maybe a mile wide.”

Fire officials said the flames were moving away from the lake and southeast toward California 299, threatening 300 to 400 rural homes about 15 miles northeast of Redding. An arm of the fire was heading slowly northeast into largely uninhabited rangeland.

The more than 1,600 firefighters battling the so-called Bear fire were hampered by temperatures above 100 degrees and relative humidity that plummeted to a parching 12%.

“When a fire gets going in those temperatures, with that little humidity, there’s going to be trouble,” said David Clarno, a public information officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in Redding.

The fire was about 50% contained by Thursday evening. There was no prediction when it might be fully contained.

Some residents, accompanied by firefighters, were allowed back into the burn area late Thursday.

Jesse Childers, 26, who was working in Redding when the fire started, said he returned to a scene of devastation with firefighter Ron Dale of the Shasta City Fire Department.

“The whole house is ashes,” Childers said. “My music studio, eight years of record collections, all gone.” So were his two calico cats, Bean and Bella, who simply vanished.

Childers began to search for the wedding ring he was planning to place soon on the finger of Amy Bronske, 27, who also was away when the fire roared through the neighborhood. Childers had kept the ring in a duffle bag beside his bed.

Crouching beside the metal springs that were all that remained of the bed, he sifted through the ashes. And there was the ring.

“My eyes teared up when we found it,” Dale said.

Officials said the fire was started about 1:20 p.m. Wednesday by sparks from a lawnmower. The mower operator has been cited, and officials said he could be held responsible for some of the costs of fighting the fire.

The fire spread rapidly Wednesday afternoon, blackening about 800 acres and burning several buildings by nightfall Wednesday.

About 150 people at the lakeshore Silverthorn Resort fled, some by boat. A shelter was set up at an elementary school in Bella Vista, about 10 miles south of the lake.

Darla and Eric Baldwin and their 11-year-old daughter were among about two-dozen people who took refuge in the school.

They said they had left their home shortly after the fire broke out, but returned home Wednesday night when firefighters appeared to be gaining the upper hand. Then, about 2:30 a.m. Thursday, winds shifted and the blaze intensified, racing through a canyon containing the Jones Valley Resort subdivision, where more than half the homes burned.

“It was just wiped out over there,” Darla Baldwin said. “The fire was moving up the hill, spreading in all directions. In some places, the flames were 50 feet tall.”

The Baldwins’ house was spared but, for the second time in 12 hours, they had to flee to the school.

Some of the refugees gathered at Dry Creek Station, a bar in Bella Vista.

Among them was a teary-eyed 41-year-old woman, who gave her name only as Tina. She said she lost her mobile home when the flames swept through Jones Valley before dawn Thursday.

“I tried to save it,” she said. “But the fire came up both sides of the street. It came so fast. The propane tanks went ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ ”

As the blaze gained momentum Thursday, firefighters created a massive firebreak in an attempt to halt the southward advance, and air tankers and helicopters dumped thousands of gallons of fire retardant.

Near midnight, fire Capt. John Trejo from Santa Barbara said the blaze still “was putting up a pretty good head. It was doing what it wanted to do.”

In 1999, a 26,200-acre fire burned through much of the same area, causing more than $6-million damage and destroying 174 homes near Shasta Lake in a random pattern that destroyed some structures and spared others.

The Baldwins were lucky then, too. Although they lost an outbuilding and a horse trailer and Darla Baldwin’s hair was singed as she plucked treasured belongings from the flames, their house escaped unscathed.

The 1999 blaze, known as the Jones fire, apparently started at a lakeside campground.

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Banks reported from Shasta Lake and Malnic from Los Angeles. Associated Press contributed to this report.