The 38,000-acre Borel Fire in Kern County has leveled the small historic mining town of Havilah.
“We lost everything – everything was gone,” Havilah resident Sean Rains told The Times on Sunday. “The whole city was burned. Many people, friends I knew – everyone lost everything.
The fire broke out Wednesday in the Kern River canyon and spread quickly because of strong winds, officials said. It ran through Hawilah on Friday night and razed almost the entire city, it seemed to spare only a few buildings.
A museum in Havilah has been reduced to ruins, save for a plaque that reads “Historic Havilah: The First County Seat for Kern County.”
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Standing amid a mixture of smoke and ash, Rains said he and several other residents helped firefighters keep the Havilah town hall from burning. But the nearby history museum has been reduced to rubble, save for a plaque that reads “Historic Havilah: First County Seat for Kern County.”
The unincorporated community of about 250 people is in the mountains northeast of Bakersfield.
“Our hearts go out to the members of the community in Havilah and the Piute Meadows area,” Kern County Deputy Fire Chief Dionisio Mitchell said during a press conference Saturday. “We know that we lost yesterday. It was difficult for them. Now we have a team that evaluates the situation.
More than 1,200 firefighters battled soaring temperatures and dry conditions Sunday as they continued to battle the blaze, which remains uncontained.
Officials could not immediately confirm the number of structures burned and said an assessment was ongoing. Thousands of people in the area remain under evacuation orders as the fire threatens populated areas such as Bodfish and Lake Isabella.
“We are already in a red flag danger condition, and the fire continues to burn in a very intense and erratic manner,” said Capt. Andrew Freeborn with the Kern County Fire Department. “Fire can be seen from miles away. If you’re looking for extreme fire behavior, we’ll see it in this fire.
Officials could not immediately confirm the number of structures burned and said an assessment was ongoing.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Havilah was founded in the 1860s and is listed as a California historic landmark. Around the time it was founded, it was an active mining center with saloons, dance halls, hotels, shops and other buildings, according to the Havilah Museum. The city was the seat of Kern County from 1866-72, when the government was moved to Bakersfield.
But Havilah was also no stranger to fire, and many residents began to leave the city after several blazes tore through in the early 1870s, according to the museum.
However, the area where the Borel fire is burning has not seen much fire activity since the early 1990s, meaning there is plenty of unburned vegetation that could fuel the fire, officials said.
“And if you combine the low (relative humidity), the high winds, the triple-digit weather that we’ve had over the last 10 to 12 days, it’s going to be a perfect storm out there,” Mitchell said during a news conference Friday.
Incident commander Jim Snow added that crews were battling “steep, unforgiving country” and hot, sunny slopes.
“The weather woman says it’s 100 degrees, but with the heat from the fire, the heat from the reflecting slope, and the heat from the general air temperature, you’re looking at 120, 130 degrees at any given time. for the firefighters standing there,” he said. .
Havilah is an unincorporated community of about 250 people in the mountains northeast of Bakersfield.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
On Sunday, Havilah resident Brett Keith returned to find his home destroyed. He dug through the rubble, but all he could find was the small gun he had owned since he was 7 years old. A neighbor’s big bull was standing in front of his house and it was burnt.
“I had to call my neighbor to come get the bull,” he said.
The Borel fire is being managed with two other fires in Kern and Tulare counties, collectively called the SQF Lightning incident. The other fires are the Trout fire, which has burned 22,660 acres and is 25% contained, and the Long fire, which has burned 9,204 acres and is 35% contained.
It is among two dozen active wildfires in California, including the 350,000-acre Park fire burning in Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties.
Mitchell said, “It’s going to be a battle for a while.”
“The state of California is on fire everywhere right now,” he said.
