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A fire that started Friday afternoon at a lumber mill in Weed quickly grew to 900 acres and forced the evacuation of the city.
The communities of Edgewood, Lake Shastina, Carrick, Big Springs and Grenada are also under an evacuation order, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said.
The Zonehaven map above shows the evacuation area in red. A shelter has been set up at the Kahtishraam Wellness Center, 1403 Kahtishraam in Yreka.
A 30-mile stretch of Highway 97 is closed, from Weed to just south of Mount Hebron. Interstate 5 remains open, though the evacuation area covers neighborhoods on both sides of it.
The Mill Fire was reported around 1 p.m. at a lumber facility next to the Weed fire station. The cause is unknown, said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
At 3:30 p.m., it was 900 acres (1.4 square miles) with no containment, Calfire’s Siskiyou unit said.
Because of gusty winds and low humidity, a red-flag warning — indicating heightened risk of wildfire — had been called for Siskiyou County from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday.
The map above will be updated according to fire managers’ instructions. Calfire’s Twitter and the sheriff’s Facebook will also provide news.
The fire is close to the area of last summer’s Lava and Tennant wildfires, which started in late June and burned 36,989 acres. The Antelope Fire, which was started by lightning about a month later, burned 145,632 acres in an adjacent area of high desert northeast of Mount Shasta.
Originally published at Bay Area News Group