When he went to check on his belongings the next morning, they were destroyed, the ground was still smoldering. But with embers in the sky, he left and spent the night on a bridge about a mile away watching the smoke plume. Hughes said he packed up his essentials, made coffee, and took a seat near his backpack to wait. warned the blaze was near the Bear River Campground. Hughes realized the fire was a threat after a radio broadcast at about 3:30 p.m. He had narrowly escaped flames the day before at his tent campsite home of nine years along the Bear River. On Thursday morning, he stood on the side of the road on Highway 174 near Shady Glen (Placer County), hoping to hitch a ride to a nearby general store to wait out the evacuation orders. Masks: Will my COVID mask work for wildfire smoke? In the area of the River Fire, many evacuees remained uncertain about the status of their homes.įire Tracker: The latest on wildfires across the state It has already registered as the sixth largest and eighth most destructive fire in state history, burning 322,000 acres. North of the River River, the Dixie Fire in Butte County was still raging Thursday. The River Fire was one of several blazes burning across a tinder-dry California, with a severe drought adding to fears that this year’s fire season could create crisis conditions that rival previous record-setting years, including 2020, which saw nearly 10,000 fires burn more than 4 million acres.

Most of the structures destroyed were in residential areas, officials said. Video: San Francisco Chronicleįoxworthy added, however, that he expects firefighters to continue gaining an upper hand on the blaze. The massive Dixie Fire tore through Greenville in Plumas County Wednesday, torching historic buildings and reducing much of the town’s main street to rubble.

River fire