Lava Fire: Officers Kill Gunman Near Pot Farms In Evacuation Area; 13,000 Acres Burned
WEED, Siskiyou County (CBS / AP) — Fire crews were battling the Lava Fire burning in Siskiyou County from the ground and in the air. By Tuesday, the fire had exploded to more than 13,000 acres near the town of Weed, and was 19% contained.
Some 10,000 people were evacuated and the Red Cross has set up a shelter at Jackson Street School, located at 405 Jackson Street, in Yreka.
Officers shot and killed a man who pulled a gun as they tried to keep him out of a complex of marijuana farms threatened by the fire.
Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told The Sacramento Bee that the man was trying to drive into the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision on Monday and pointed a handgun at a group of officers that included a sheriff's deputy and local police.
"Based upon preliminary information, it appears that there might have been a couple rounds fired from the suspect's firearm," LaRue said.
The officers killed the man, who was not immediately identified.
The subdivision has been converted into a huge network of marijuana farms mostly run by Hmong families. The county has banned large-scale marijuana cultivation but thousands of pot greenhouses have sprung up. Police efforts to shut them down have been countered with claims of racial discrimination.
The violence erupted as the Lava Fire grew rapidly and the sheriff's office issued evacuation orders for the communities of Lake Shastina, Juniper Valley and Mount Shasta Vista. The flames spanned nearly 21 square miles (54 square kilometers) Tuesday.
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The Sacramento Bee reported that nearly 3,000 people live in Lake Shastina and as many as 8,000 others live in the area to tend to the thousands of marijuana grows.
"All evacuation orders are still in place at this time. We do not know what structures have burned down and the status of many areas," the sheriff's office said on social media Tuesday.
Ignited by lightning on June 24, the fire is burning brush and timber in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest north of the town of Weed, about 250 miles (402 kilometers) north of San Francisco.
Nearly 500 firefighters were battling the flames in rough and rocky terrain.
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They faced a tougher fight because the region was under excessive-heat warnings, with high temperatures expected to range from 100 degrees (38 Celsius) to 110 degrees (43 Celsius).
It comes as an unprecedented heat wave in the Pacific Northwest broke temperature records in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, this week and moved inland Tuesday. Climate change is making such extreme weather events more likely and more intense.
