Wildfires Blaze Across California Gold Country, Ravage historic Town

CHINESE CAMP, California:  A cluster of lightning-sparked wildfires raged across portions of two Northern California counties on Wednesday, forcing widespread evacuations and engulfing part of an historic Gold Rush mining town once home to thousands of Chinese immigrants.

Wind-whipped flames from nearly two dozen separate blazes have scorched more than 13,000 acres (5,261 hectares) of sun-baked dry grass, brush and timber since a lightning storm ignited the fires on Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The remote village of Chinese Camp, a town of fewer than 100 residents on the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California’s Gold Country region, was particularly hard hit by one of the fires.

According to a Reuters journalist on the scene, the blaze destroyed dozens of homes in and around Chinese Camp, a remnant of the Gold Rush-era mining community first settled by thousands of Chinese laborers in the mid-19th century.

Flames also gutted two historic buildings, including an old stage coach stop, and scorched a hilltop cemetery but left the adjacent church established in 1854 unscathed, CalFire spokesperson Jaime Williams said.

Three other landmark buildings, the Chinese Camp Store and Tavern, and the town’s post office and its pagoda-style public school, also survived the fire, she said.

The entire town and several other communities in Tuolumne County and neighboring Calaveras County remained under evacuation orders as a firefighting force of more than 600 personnel battled to contain the blazes, CalFire said.

The full extent of property losses and evacuations had yet to be determined, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

“We are securing all available resources  including support from our federal partners  to fight this growing lightning complex fire in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement on Wednesday.

At least two evacuation shelters were opened for people displaced by the fires, along with shelters for livestock and smaller domestic pets.

Electricity crews were out in force working to restore power knocked out by fire damage to power lines, transformers and utility poles.

The 22 blazes comprising the TCU September Lightning Complex fires ranked as the largest of about a dozen wildfire incidents documented across the state by CalFire on Wednesday. But they paled in destructive force compared with the Los Angeles fires in January that killed at least 31 people and destroyed nearly 16,000 homes.

-Tracy Barbutes and Steve Gorman

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