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Raging wildfire engulfs homes in California town

Two other fires, one near Yosemite National Park in central California and another east of Sacramento, also led hundreds of people to evacuate their homes.

In Weed, as crews put out remaining embers, residents wandered through scorched neighbourhoods covered in pink fire retardant had been dropped by firefighting airplanes. Some homes were burned to the ground, with only chimneys left standing. Broken water pipes spurted over the blackened landscape. The remnants of the Holy Family Catholic Church were still smoking, marked by twisted metal girders lying on the ground.

The fast-moving blaze, which began on Monday, was among nearly a dozen wildfires burning in California that have been exacerbated by the state’s third straight year of drought.

The tinder-dry conditions have sent firefighters scrambling from blaze to blaze, almost nonstop. The cause of the Weed fire is still under investigation. Winds gusting up to 40mph (64kph) pushed the flames into town, where they quickly chewed through a hillside neighbourhood.

‘It went through here so fast it was unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like this,’ Jim Taylor, a retired butcher who has lived in the town for 30 years said.
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