Butte Fire Explodes, Tripling In Size In Roughly Four Hours In Amador, Calaveras Counties
AMADOR COUNTY (CBS13) — A massive fire is raging in Amador and Calaveras Counties as record heat and ample fuel allowed the Butte Fire to more than triple in size on Thursday.
The fire reached 14,700 acres as of 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, and containment dropped to 10 percent. Just four hours earlier, it was 4,000 acres and 20 percent contained.
The fire started in Amador County on Wednesday afternoon before jumping the Mokelumne River into Calaveras County on that night.
"When's it going to stop?" asked evacuee Daryl Zellers. "It's jumping canyons and counties."
Ripping and racing across a Calaveras County ridge, angry orange flames and black, billowing smoke shot into the sky.
"It's hitting places I never thought it would reach," Zellers said.
The wind-fueled wildfire jumped Highway 26 earlier in the day, pushing south. A burned-out shell of a car and a spot fire that spread to an old bus were part of the aftermath.
Evacuee Tracy Zellers barely slept more than 15 minutes with her eyes trained on the smoke. Her mind was on the home her family left behind.
"Our house is kind of in a canyon; we're praying it may have jumped over our home and maybe we'll survive," she said.
Her husband grabbed only what was irreplaceable, like a ceremonial sword from his great-grandfather.
"Last minute, I looked up and saw it hanging above my bar on these two hooks, and I grabbed it," he said.
As the fire keeps growing, he isn't sure what he'll have to come back to.
