A number of crews that have been fighting the Dixie Fire near Lake Almanor are being moved to the Caldor Fire in El Dorado County.
Cal Fire now reports the Caldor Fire has grown to over 65,000 acres. It has doubled in size since Tuesday evening. a number of communities along Highway 50, including Pollock Pines, remain evacuated this morning. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tweeted a satellite video of the wildfire that showed the blaze's "explosive growth" east of Sacramento. Containment remains at 0%.
As of Wednesday evening, the uncontained blaze had forced about 23,000 residents of El Dorado County to leave their homes,the governor’s office reported. Nearly a third of those evacuations were confirmed on Wednesday in a space of less than six hours.At a news briefing on the Caldor fire, Dusty Martin, a Cal Fire official, asked residents to be patient on the question of “repopulation.”“The fire fighters on the ground are doing everything they can to start bringing some containment to this,” he said of the fire. “But understand: It is going to take some time before we can get you back into your communities.”
California's office of emergency services says more than 31,000 people have been forced to evacuated from active fire zones. nearly 12,000 evacuees are in Lassen and Plumas counties in the Dixie Fire zone. More than 16,000 residents in El Dorado County are facing new evacuation orders this week where the Caldor Fire is burning out of control. Another 2,500 residents in Tehama, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity counties are also evacuated.