Lightning-Sparked Fires Tear Through Historic California Gold Rush Town

Firefighters are battling a rapidly growing wildfire complex that ripped through a town in California’s Gold Country after a major lightning storm on Tuesday sparked more than 20 blazes in the region.

Residents in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties are under evacuation orders due to the TCU Lightning Complex, which has burned 12,000 acres of rural terrain, threatening ancestral tribal lands and the historic Gold Rush town of Chinese Camp.

“Everything is burned down,” said Add Beale, who owns a convenience store in Chinese Camp. She said her store is still standing, but the flames have flattened the buildings that once flanked the 1934 structure.

Beale and her husband, Richard, bought the store nine years ago after falling in love with Chinese Camp’s community. Her family was evacuated Tuesday morning after watching distant flames advance toward their property.

“I [was] just getting so nervous, keep watching it when it comes closer, and then the police come and tell us to just have to leave,” she said.

“I love this town so much, I love everyone in the town,” she said. “I cannot stand [to look at] the television anymore, or social media, it just brings my tears … out.”

Cal Fire’s most recent status reports haven’t yet confirmed the number of structures lost to the blaze, but spokesperson Toni Davis confirmed that multiple had been destroyed. Videos captured by a KCRA reporter on Tuesday night and photos posted on social media by residents showed smoke, flames and massive destruction along the highway that runs through the iconic town on the way to Yosemite.

The fire complex includes eight smaller blazes that cropped up Tuesday after an intense lightning storm passed through the area with more than 9,000 lightning strikes throughout the early morning.

Two blazes — the 6-5 Fire in Tuolumne County and the 2-7 Fire in Calaveras County — have prompted evacuation orders, and an additional half dozen zones in both fires’ paths are under warnings. The 6-5 Fire had burned more than 6,470 acres in Chinese Camp and neighboring areas as of Wednesday morning, while the 2-7 Fire near La Honda Park and Vallecito had spread to 580 acres.

Davis said that residents should look to their county sheriff’s website for the most up-to-date evacuation information, and sign up to receive alerts on their cellphones.

“That’s very important,” she said. “They need to know where they’re at and if they are being affected at any point in time.”

Firefighters are battling through tough, rural terrain and hot, dry weather, making containment a challenge, Davis said. The region is also laden with very dry tall grasses, brush and timber fuels.

She said crews have to hike to reach the fires in many places and are attacking the flames indirectly. Firefighters are forming firebreaks and contingency lines that aim to stop forward progress of the fires, Davis said, but because of the conditions, they are having to do so farther from the current fire boundaries, leaving some vegetation between to burn.

Dozers and other equipment needed to cover the rural landscape were on the way Wednesday morning, according to Davis.

“We’re still getting our feet under us and getting those resources coming,” she said. “It’s just a matter of getting people here.”

More than 630 personnel are fighting the fires from the ground and air, according to Cal Fire, and the agency’s Type 1 Incident Management Team 6 is expected to take over command of the incident on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he had secured Federal Emergency Management Agency grant funding to fight the 2-7 Fire, which will allow local agencies responding to the blaze to apply for up to 75% reimbursements for their fire suppression work.

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

KQED’s Danielle Venton contributed to this report.