NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Hell and high water: Oroville besieged again
Wildfire destroys
Northern California
homes months after
flood evacuations
By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press
OROVILLE, Calif. —
With looming floods and
roaring
flames,
Chuck
Wilsey’s year sounds more
like ancient scripture than
modern living in Northern
California.
Wilsey returned to his
ranch home in Oroville on
Monday, relieved to learn
it had been spared by the
wildfire, just as he had stayed
clear of troubles brought on
by a damaged spillway at a
nearby dam five months ago.
“I don’t know what’s
worse — fire, or water — it’s
a toss-up,” Wilsey, 53, told
The Associated Press after
returning to his home on
Monday afternoon.
He and his family were
among the more than 5,000
people evacuated as flames
raced through grassy foot-
hills in the Sierra Nevada,
about 60 miles north of
Sacramento. Most of those
evacuations remain in effect,
though Wilsey and others
have been allowed to return
home.
The blaze burned nearly
9 square miles of grass,
injured four firefighters
and destroyed at least 17
structures. It was 35 percent
contained.
Crews were making
progress against that fire and
dozens of others across Cali-
fornia, Colorado, Arizona
and New Mexico, and into
Canada.
Wilsey was far from cele-
bratory, instead regrouping
almost immediately and
making new plans in case
the fire makes another run at
them. “I was ripping pictures
off the wall trying to get
ready,” Wilsey said.
He said he was leaving his
trailer attached to his truck
and telling his daughters to
keep prized possessions they
AP Photo/Noah Berger
CalFire firefighter Jake Hainey, left, and engineer Anna Mathiasen watch as a wildfire burns near Oroville, Calif.,
on Saturday. The fast-moving wildfire in the Sierra Nevada foothills destroyed structures, including homes, and
led to several minor injuries, fire officials said Saturday as blazes threatened homes around California during a
heat wave.
AP Photo/Noah Berger
Trucks burned by a wildfire rest in a grove near
Oroville, Calif., on Saturday.
couldn’t take the first time
close at hand.
The area burning is
southeast of Oroville, near
where 200,000 residents
downstream
from
the
770-foot-high
Oroville
Dam were briefly evacu-
ated in February when the
structure’s spillways began
crumbling. Wilsey’s home
was far enough away that he
didn’t have to evacuate from
the floods.
His daughter, Krystle
Chambers, who lives on
the same property, said the
one-two punch of floods and
fires was taking its toll.
“It’s hard, it’s rough,” she
said. “Way too many hits.
First it’s this side of town,
AP Photo/Noah Berger
Josh Cornelison kisses girlfriend Sharon Reitan as she
shows evacuation shelter volunteers video of their
burned home on Sunday, in Oroville, Calif. A wild-
fire leveled their home, as well as several neighbor’s
residences, as it burned though a mountain community
Friday.
then the other side of town.
It almost makes you want to
move.”
Pam Deditch, who is
running the shelter where
Wilsey and his family were
huddled, also managed a
shelter during the winter
drenching.
“If it’s not one thing, it’s
the other,” she said with a
laugh. “We’re used to this.
We’re resilient. We’re strong.
We get fires and we get
flooding.”
In Southern California, at
least 3,500 people remained
out of their homes as a pair of
fires raged at different ends
of Santa Barbara County.
The larger of the two charred
more than 45 square miles
of dry brush and threatened
more than 130 rural homes.
It was 15 percent contained.
The fires broke out amid
a blistering weekend heat
wave that toppled tempera-
ture records. Slightly cooler
weather is expected to give
crews a break in the coming
days.
California officials said
the extraordinarily wet
winter caused thick spring
blooms that are now dried
out and burning, making for
unpredictable fire behavior.
“You see rapid fire growth
in a lot of these fires, larger
acreage consumption, which
makes it very difficult to fire-
fighters to fight,” said Bennet
Milloy, spokesman for the
California Department of
Forestry and Fire Protection.
In Colorado, crews were
winding down the fight
against a wildfire that tempo-
rarily forced the evacuation
of hundreds of people near
the resort town of Breck-
enridge. Firefighters built
containment lines around at
least 85 percent of the blaze.
Across the border in
Canada, crews contended
with more than 200 wildfires
in British Columbia that have
forced thousands to flee and
destroyed dozens of build-
ings, including several homes
and two airport hangars.
“We are just, in many
ways, at the beginning of the
worst part of the fire season
and we watch the weather, we
watch the wind, and we pray
for rain,” British Columbia
Premier Christy Clark said.
Rob Schweizer, manager
of the Kamloops Fire Centre,
said it had been an unprece-
dented 24 hours. “We prob-
ably haven’t seen this sort
of activity that involves so
many residences and people
in the history of the province
of B.C.,” he said.
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Iraqi declares ‘total victory’
Part Time - Inside Salesperson
over Islamic State in Mosul
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) —
Iraq on Monday declared
“total victory” over the
Islamic State group in Mosul,
retaking full control of the
country’s second-largest city
three years after it was seized
by extremists bent on building
a global caliphate.
“This great feast day
crowned the victories of the
fighters and the Iraqis for the
past three years,” said Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi,
flanked by his senior military
leadership at a small base
on the edge of the Old City,
where the final battles for
Mosul unfolded.
Al-Abadi alluded to the
brutality of the battle for
Mosul — Iraq’s longest yet in
the fight against IS — saying
the triumph had been achieved
“by the blood of our martyrs.”
While Mosul fell to IS in
a matter of days in 2014, the
campaign to retake the city
lasted nearly nine months.
The fight, closely backed by
airstrikes from the U.S.-led
coalition, brought an end
to the extremists’ so-called
territorial caliphate, but has
also left thousands dead,
entire neighborhoods in ruins
and nearly 900,000 displaced
from their homes.
Shortly after al-Abadi’s
speech, the coalition congrat-
ulated him on the victory
but noted that parts of the
Old City still “must be back-
cleared of explosive devices
and possible ISIS fighters in
hiding.” ISIS, ISIL and Daesh
are alternative acronyms for
the Islamic State group.
“The victory in Mosul,
a city where ISIS once
proclaimed its so-called
‘caliphate,’ signals that its
days in Iraq and Syria are
numbered,” President Donald
Trump said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, airstrikes
pounded the last IS-held
territory on the western edge
of the Tigris, Humvees rushed
wounded to field hospitals
and soldiers hurriedly filled
bags with hand grenades to
ferry to the front.
Iraqi troops had slowly
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AP Photo/Karim Kadim
Iraqis celebrate while holding national flags in Tahrir
square in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday. Iraqi Prime Minister
Haider al-Abadi declared victory against the Islamic
State group in Mosul Monday evening, after nearly
nine months of largely grueling urban combat.
pushed through the narrow
alleys of the Old City during
the past week, punching holes
through walls and demol-
ishing houses to carve supply
routes and fighting positions
in a district where many of the
buildings date back centuries.
For days, the remaining
few hundred militants held
an area measuring less than
half a square mile, and Iraqi
commanders
described
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Al-Abadi also visited
Mosul on Sunday, congrat-
ulating the troops on recent
gains but stopping short of
declaring an outright victory
as clashes continued.
The drawn-out endgame
in Iraq’s fight for Mosul high-
lighted the resilience of the
extremists and the continued
reliance of Iraqi forces on air
support to retake territory.
Iraqi commanders said
gains slowed to a crawl in
recent days as IS fighters used
their families — including
women and children — as
human shields. As the
battle space constricted, the
coalition began approving
airstrikes dropping bombs
of 200 pounds or more on
IS targets within 50 yards of
friendly forces.
Plumes of smoke Monday
grew larger than the strip of
territory under IS control.
“This used to be a beautiful
city, tourists used to come
here,” said Iraqi army Capt.
Marwan Hadi based inside
the Old City. The last days of
the fight for Mosul were the
fiercest, he said.
“All along the front line,
there are so many families
under the rubble,” he said. “I
saved two children and their
mother, but one daughter, we
couldn’t reach her.”
Reports
of
civilian
casualties spiked as Iraqi
forces punched into Mosul’s
western half in February.
Residents fleeing the fighting
reported that entire families
sheltering in the basements
of their homes were killed
by airstrikes targeting small
teams of IS fighters.
Thousands of civilians
were estimated to have been
killed in the fight for Mosul,
according to Nineveh’s
provincial council. A toll
that does not include those
still believed buried under
collapsed buildings.
Also Monday, the United
Nations said there was no end
in sight to the humanitarian
crisis in Iraq despite the
conclusion of the fighting.
Of the more than 897,000
people displaced from Mosul,
the U.N. said thousands of
residents will probably not
be able to return to the city
because of “extensive damage
caused during the conflict.”
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