A flat tire started the deadly Carr Fire and days of devastation in California
By Faith Karimi and Cheri Mossburg, CNN
Updated 10:09 AM ET, Sun August 5, 2018
(CNN)It happens countless times on roads across America: a vehicle gets a flat tire, usually just a temporary inconvenience.
But on one road near Redding, California, when a tire failed last month on a trailer and its rim scraped the asphalt, the result was
catastrophic for an entire region.
The sparks that shot out July 23 from that minor incident, California fire officials said, ignited what is now the sixth-most
destructive wildfire in state history.
The Carr Fire blazed a fiery path along Highway 299, lighting up mile after mile of dry brush as it crept up on residential areas.
The blaze turned everything it touched into ash, mangled metal and black embers, and is still burning nearly two weeks later. It's
killed seven people, scorched more than 145,000 acres and is the deadliest of 17 blazes racing through the state.
It caught residents by surprise
Ed Bledsoe lost his wife and their two great-grandchildren in the fire, all within 15 minutes.
The Shasta County resident had left home to see a doctor, unaware of the fire's erratic movement. At the time, it had burned for
three days, but away from his neighborhood.
While he was out, his wife, Melody Bledsoe, 70, called and told him the fire was getting closer to their home. She begged him to
come get her and their great-grandchildren: Emily Roberts, 4, and James Roberts, 5.
James took the phone and pleaded with his great-grandfather to hurry up and save them.
"He just kept saying, 'Grandpa, Come get me ... come on, Grandpa,' " Ed Bledsoe said.
He dropped everything and rushed home. But the roads were congested and the heat and flames so intense, the area near his
house was cordoned off. His wife and the two children were among the seven people killed in the Carr Fire.
"I tried to call them back and it just went to nothing," Bledsoe said as he wept. "Poor babies and my wife."
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Carr Fire widower describes emotional phone call 01:09
The winds caused a tornado of fire
The day Bledsoe's family died, the winds were so strong in Redding, they uprooted trees, ripped off roofs and downed power lines.
Experts described it as a "firenado," when a fire's intense heat causes the air to heat up and rise rapidly. That, combined with strong
winds, creates a vortex similar to a dust devil that pulls fires in different directions.
Redding resident Dominic Galvin said he and his wife did not think the fire would get that big so fast, and scrambled to get out at
the last minute.
"When we saw the fire on the ridge ... once we saw it there we knew it was coming, but it was too late then," he said.
His wife, Sylvia Castaneda, broke down in tears as she recounted their loss.
"I had a lot of photos from my childhood, from life, and everything is gone. It seems like part of my life is gone. There's nothing --
just ashes."
The Carr Fire spread toward the towns of Douglas City and Lewiston near Redding, California.
Firefighters suffered losses, too
Firefighter David Spliethof was doing his job as a spotter pilot, flying over the fiery chaos to assess damage and flag trouble. As he
flew over his neighborhood this week, he realized his home had burned to ashes, too.
He took a picture of the charred debris where his house once stood and continued fighting the blaze, at times working 24-hour
shifts with some of the nearly 5,000 firefighters battling it.
"I don't feel that I did anything special," he said of continuing to work despite losing his home. "Once I saw my house gone ... there's
going to be plenty of time to go back through the remains and see what we can salvage."
Other firefighters lost their lives while trying to save others.
Of the seven people killed in the Carr Fire, two were firefighters: Jeremy Stoke, who was helping evacuate people, and an
unidentified bulldozer operator killed while fighting the flames.
To show their appreciation to firefighters and emergency personnel, Northern California communities are offering them food, water,
even free haircuts. Some have posted handwritten signs all over the city. "Best first responders ever! Our heroes," one sign read.
"We wanted to show our gratitude for fighting to save our city," said Redding resident Nichole Grubbs-Miller, who posted some of
the signs.
Nichole Grubbs-Miller and her sister's children made signs thanking firefighters for their service fighting the Carr Fire.
Nichole Grubbs-Miller and her sister's children made signs thanking firefighters for their service fighting the Carr Fire.
Some areas look 'like a bomb hit'
All that's left of some neighborhoods are piles of ash, concrete and charred cars. Preetha Reddy said her street in Redding looks
like a war zone.
"There's nothing left. It looks like a bomb hit it," she said. Residents are not allowed to enter, and the destruction seems surreal.
"If they'd only let us in and have it sink in," Reddy said.
Fire officials said some areas in Shasta County remain under evacuation orders because shifting winds and steep terrain are
creating hazardous conditions. The weather this weekend will not provide much relief, with temperatures forecast to be in the mid-
90s and wind gusts of up to 30 mph, CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford said.
Firefighter Rick Johnson said the humidity and the nearly triple-digit temperatures are difficult enough without adding the heat from
the fire. The blaze is so large and hot, it is creating its own localized weather system with strong winds, making it difficult to predict
which way it will spread.
Carr is one of 17 major fires in the state
Smoke from the Carr and Ferguson fires can be seen in satellite images.
Smoke from the Carr and Ferguson fires can be seen in satellite images.
The Carr Fire, named after the location where it began, has burned more than 1,500 structures to the ground and is one of 17 major
wildfires stretching state resources, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. said.
California has already spent a quarter of its firefighting budget for the year just in July.
Firefighters are struggling to stop the blazes, with the Carr Fire 41% contained by Saturday night.
Fire officials have issued a grim prediction, warning that massive blazes will cost the state billions of dollars over the next decade.
"What we're seeing in California right now is more destructive, larger fires burning at rates that we have historically never seen," Cal
Fire spokesman Jonathan Cox said.
CNN's Paul Vercammen, Dan Simon and Sarah Moon contributed to this report
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Personally, I think the 'Fuktonium' on the ground is turning the California and British Columbia fires into (all) firestorms. I'm not sure I believe the DEW theory of how the fires were purposely started, though the winds and the heat were abnormal in the fires that started in forest areas, according to long time fire officials. The fact that in both BC and Cali fires, there were multiple spontaneous fires SUGGESTS, arson.
Evergreens hold radiation, even putting out decayed radiation in Spring pollen, so decayed radiation continues, ad nauseum in trees and soil. No one is taking soil samples, apparently, or if they do have them, they are locked up in some lawyer's office. Japan actually suggested cutting down all the trees in the first two years after the Daichi reactors blew up (several times) because of the 'gift that keeps on giving' decayed radiation particles, rendering vegetation mutated, preserved to a point of being inedible, and emitting radiation particles to the air.
If you ever find yourself in a fire like these, take some soil samples if you have time. For sure the 'toxic topsoil' layers will be neatly cleaned away, as soon as possible, after the houses burn down to the ground, for that is where the evidence is to prove microwave or something else was involved in the burn. Of course, transformers going down quickly from high winds, in dry brush, is going to create a huge firestorm but not spontaneously in multiple places.
I'm not sure a fully radiated tree would burn from the inside out, seen a couple of times in these fires. We do have a lot of dying trees from beetles and drought and ultraviolet radiation. Some trees look fine on the outside but are actually very dried out on the inside, leaving only the outside cambrian layer to deliver nutrients to the branches. Maybe a fire spark would burn down the into core instead of hitting smaller branches? Several videos suggest anomalous burning due to the lack of kindling being burnt. It's very unusual to see a forest on fire and not see literally everything burned up, down to the kindling. Maybe the very HIGH WINDS scattered the fire quickly and in strange ways? Likely there is more than one cause, a set of variables, possibly some geoengineering involved. Let's hope space weapons are NOT involved, in any way, or, we are done for, IMO.
With accelerants on the ground, barium oxide, Fuktonium, whatever, you'd think the kindling would burn too, ya? But no, kindling didn't burn, the wooden inside of guard rails burned first that held metal rails to 2x4 wooden posts. The rails melted off the burned out wood pieces but the 2x4's are still standing. Weird weird weird. There has to be something else in the air in these fires that is accelerating wind and sparks, while creating uheard of temperatures even for fierce forest fires, more like the firestorms we saw in Australia a few years back.
The linear nature of the fires in some areas, might denote where gas lines lit up and burned everything along the lines? It's hard to figure out what really happened in these fires. Someone knows who monitors atmosheric changes - they must know! What's sick to me is not one person has the balls to speak up, not one RF tech, not one engineer, politician, or military person. Only the fire officials, who've seen way too much, are speaking up for being absolutely horrified and confounded about the origins of these fires. We are as sick as our secrets, to my way of thinking. Is this how we're going to roll, one individual disaster at a time, devastation/relocation, then silence against monster entities who find this all a real estate developer's amusement ride? Meanwhile the more logical people attack the conspiracy theorists saying 'not this, no not that' but have nothing to add to explain the anomalies of these fires - NOTHING.
Are things rotten in Denmark, or what? Are these fires simply 'really bad fires' to you? What do you think Eve? Have you seen the various videos about the way these fires started and how they burned? The fire marshall interview is interesting- ;)
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