The Dixie Fire has now burned 322,502 acres with 35% containment as of Thursday morning, according to CAL FIRE, becoming the sixth-largest wildfire in California history in terms of acres burned.
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Brandon Clement, an extreme weather photographer, saw the Dixie Fire's devastation up close Wednesday night as it burned through the evacuated Plumas County town of Greenville.
"The fire just raged right down the hill," Clement recounted to KCBS Radio on Thursday morning. "It was crowning, which means it was running across the top of trees at a fast rate, and just overtook the town. Firefighters just had to back off."
The fire prompted an additional 4,000 people to evacuate their homes on Wednesday as high heat, low humidity and strong winds combined for red flag weather conditions. Nearly 26,500 people in multiple counties have been evacuated, a CAL FIRE spokesperson told the Associated Press on Wednesday night.
Greenville, with a population around 800, had been under evacuation orders since Monday. The Plumas County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday night urged everyone who hadn’t left the area to head to safety in a Facebook post.
No injuries and deaths had been reported, and the prior evacuations meant Clement could safely evacuate the extent of the fire’s damage late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.
Clement told KCBS Radio’s Dan Mitchinson and Holly Quan that he was originally in the Lake Almanor area when the Beckwourth Complex broke out. He was shooting a climate-change docuseries on wildfires, as the Beckwourth Complex was followed by the Bootleg, Tamarack, Dixie, Fly and River Fires in California and Oregon.
In all, fires in California have burned nearly 580,000 acres this year. The Dixie Fire has accounted for over 55% of those acres.
With August only days old, Clement could only describe this wildfire season as "historic," fearing the worst is yet to come amid continued drought conditions across the state.
Destructive wildfires are becoming increasingly common in California, and Clement fears becoming numb to their effects. He said he makes a point to give back to the areas hit hardest, and to "reset" when he returns home.
Clement never wants to normalize the destruction he saw Wednesday night.
"It's one of the things I worry about, personally," Clement said. "I can't speak for anyone else, but I hope nobody ever gets numb to this because a lot of people's lives were drastically impacted and changed forever last night. And when that happens, it shouldn't go unnoticed."
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