California wildfires: Dixie Fire Friday evening update By ABC10

Breaking news on the Dixie fire: now new evacuation orders have just been issued in them county, it's in effect in zones, b-17, c-17, d-19, 227 and 228. That's in the area of mill creek, which you can see from the map, is south of Lassen volcanic park. An evacuation warning is still in effect in zone b16. That's north of mineral. The Dixie fire has burned more than 517 thousand acres now across butte plumes, Lassen and team counties more than a quarter of the nation's firefighting. Resources are on it, but containment is still just 31 percent.

Unfortunately, the weather right now is causing concerns with stronger east winds. Coming in from thunderstorms, the plumes county sheriff's office announcing that 43 people are safe, who were previously unaccounted for the Dixie fire, but it is still searching for four others tonight. Take a look at your screen, hear the names of those people, Adam Karl, of Chester, Ronald Avila, Raymond hunt and Irene Andrews all from Greenville. If you have any information regarding where any of these people might be, you're urged to call the plumes county sheriff's office, and we find ABC 10s. Monica Coleman live in Chester, where fire officials decided not to let people back in their homes today.

Monica that's right, Kurt I'm here in Chester, and it looks like a ghost town, not just because the majority of the population has left to evacuate, but also because take a look. The smoke and the air are casting a ghostly screen across the community and firefighters telling me that they are worried about the weather that may bring more concern to the firefight three thousand fire crews are working to contain the fire, but last night thunderstorms created numerous hot spots and flames jumped fire lines. Two crew members had to be treated for severe smoke. Inhalation, thunderstorms overnight came with high winds, creating an extreme fire event for fire crews, plumes county announcing. They are canceling depopulation for Chester lake almoner, west and Prattville cal fire says two new fires started quickly last night, but they were able to get on it quickly.

Crews are in the process of putting a break between those fires that started ground access also continues to be a challenge with burned, trees, falling onto roads, blocking entries into areas. Firefighters need to reach, and a thick smoke is making it difficult for crews to fight the fire from above yesterday. I think I believe they dropped about 35, 000 gallons of water, so they were working a very active portion of the fire, but when the smoke rolls in our aircraft can't fly because they can't see the ground cal fire says, another win event is expected either Sunday or Monday, and they are keeping a close eye on the forecast and are preparing right now for that wind event, Kurt. That is not good news. Our Monica Coleman live in Chester tonight, thanks Monica and here's Tracy, with a look at a possibility of more and more thunderstorms throughout the weekend.

Yeah, I just texted Monica Coleman, and I said you do know. Thunderstorms are moving your way. Let's take a look at where we are looking at that Dixie fire and there are again some spot fires on the northern end of lake island. You can see just outside Greenville and also near Chester and, more importantly, we are looking at some lightning strikes. So that's every time you see a white flat there.

That is an opportunity for a lightning strike coming in exactly where we're looking at the Dixie fire. It does also look like with the green here we're seeing some rain showers, but because we are so dry even with the rain, you can still spark a new fire with those lightning strikes. We're also seeing more in the way of isolated thunderstorms through Truckee moving in through south Lake Tahoe, and the opportunity for isolated thunderstorms will be in our forecast until around sunset, which comes around eight o'clock tonight, so about three more hours of activity and the opportunity for instability, of course, where we have the Dixie fire and also moving into other parts of the sierra coming up. We turn our attention to the heat over the course of the weekend. As we now have, a heat advisory in effect could be the hottest weekend this summer, we'll take a look at those temperatures coming up all right, Tracy.

Thank you.

Source : ABC10