The wildfire had been burning for three days when Amy Kolb Tucker got an evacuation warning on Monday at her suburban home in Lake Shastina. Soon after however, large wind-driven embers started coming down in her neighborhood.
“That’s when we got really concerned, because it wasn’t just ash falling from the sky, there were large particles falling from the sky,” Kolb Tucker says.
Within an hour the warning was upgraded to an order to evacuate. She and her family took their motorhome to her sister’s house in Etna, about 50 miles away. Kolb Tucker says she’s found few details about the state of her community besides what residents are reporting from emergency scanners on social media.
“When we could climb our hill and see the progression of the fire, we had this sense of ‘Oh, we’re okay.’ And now, being miles away and not knowing anything, I think that’s pretty stressful,” she says.
On Tuesday, responding fire agencies said they were reinforcing protections around the city of Weed, as well as focusing fire prevention efforts on the Lake Shastina and Juniper Valley areas.
An excessive heat warning is in effect until 11 PM on Thursday because of dangerously hot temperatures. Highway 97 is closed for approximately 30 miles from Weed northeast to Juniper Lodge.
Detailed evacuation information can be found on the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Facebook page.
