Authorities have recovered two bodies from a neighborhood in Weed, Calif., that was set on fire Friday by the rapid-fire factory in Siskiyou County.
The blaze burned dozens of homes and other buildings in the rural northern California community, and emergency crews spent Sunday doing door-to-door assessments. The fire has burned over 4,200 acres and is now 25% contained.
“We lost two people in this fire. There’s no easy way to say that,” Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue said at a community meeting on Sunday, asking for a minute’s silence for those who died.
The factory fire, which began on Friday, appears to have erupted near the Roseburg Forest Products property and spread to nearby homes in the historically black community of Lincoln Heights within minutes, Weed Mayor said. , Kim Greene.
It quickly became an urban conflagration as flames moved from house to house, the majority of them older wooden structures, she said.
The commercial structure that caught fire was an old building that once housed a planing mill and is now used to store spare parts for the active Roseburg veneer mill, which was not involved in the fire said Rebecca Taylor, director of communications for Springfield, Ore.-based wood products company. No mining activity is taking place in the building and it is unclear whether the fire started there or nearby, she said.
Authorities had not yet determined the number of homes destroyed as of Saturday afternoon, but said they were working quickly to assess the damage.
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