Over 2,000 homes threatened in California fire

Firefighters inspect the interior of the Roseburg Lumber Mill in Weed, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. Parts of the mill, the major employer in Weed, were damaged in the Boles Fire when it burned through the Siskiyou County town on Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. (AP Photo/The Record Searchlight, Greg Barnette) Firefighters inspect the interior of the Roseburg Lumber Mill in Weed, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. Parts of the mill, the major employer in Weed, were damaged in the Boles Fire when it burned through the Siskiyou County town on Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. (AP Photo/The Record Searchlight, Greg Barnette)

By Associated Press September 18, 2014 3 min read

POLLOCK PINES, Calif. (AP) – An out-of-control wildfire in Northern California threatened more than 2,000 homes and consumed huge swaths of timber land east of Sacramento while another town near the Oregon Border took reckoning of the damage done by a wildfire that burned 200 homes earlier in the week.

In the fire east of Sacramento, 2,500 firefighters were taking on the blaze that was threatening 2,003 homes and another 1,505 smaller structures, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

“It’s been an explosive couple of days,” CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.

The fire has burned nearly 44 square miles of trees and brush and is just 5 percent contained.

“We are faced with a large and dangerous fire,” Laurence Crabtree, a U.S. Forest Service supervisor for the Eldorado National Forest, told the Sacramento Bee. “We have had significant losses of public timber land, private timber land and watershed.”