Thousands of people remained under evacuation orders on Saturday after a wind-whipped wildfire raged through rural northern California, injuring people and torching an unknown number of homes.
The fire that began Friday near a wood products plant quickly blew into a neighbourhood on the northern edge of Weed but then carried the flames away from the city of about 2,600 people.
Evacuees described heavy smoke and chunks of ash raining down.
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Annie Peterson said she was sitting on the porch of her home near Roseburg Forest Products, which manufactures wood veneers, when “all of a sudden we heard a big boom and all that smoke was just rolling over toward us”.
Very quickly her home and about a dozen others were on fire. She said members of her church helped evacuate her and her son, who is immobile. She said the scene of smoke and flames looked like “the world was coming to an end”.
Suzi Brady, a Cal Fire spokeswoman, said several people were injured.
