DEVASTATION

Dixie Fire Swallows More of California as Authorities Search for 8 Missing People

The fire has already swallowed an area larger than New York City.

It’s taken the Dixie fire roughly three weeks to swallow pretty much all of Greenville, California, a town with 1,100 residents. This week, the fire, the largest blaze currently burning in the U.S., jumped from the 6th to 3rd largest in California history. CNN reports that firefighters are working 48-hour shifts with no sleep, and authorities are currently searching for eight missing persons. Per the San Francisco Chronicle, authorities reported the fire was 35 percent contained on Friday morning—but were forced to revise that figure by the evening, when better mapping revealed it was only 21 percent contained.

“Once we got in there and were able to do some better mapping, we found… there is a whole lot more un-contained line out there,” Rick Carhart, a spokesperson with Cal Fire, told the paper. Sacramento’s CBS outlet reports that the fire grew more than 22,000 acres overnight, to 446,723; it’s already swallowed an area larger than New York City, The Guardian notes. No injuries or deaths have been reported, and evacuations remain in effect.