Fire burns historic CA gold mining town after more than 10,000 lightning strikes across state

SAN FRANCISCO — An explosion of new wildfires across Northern California is being linked to lightning, with more than 10,000 strikes across the state on Tuesday.

At least one fire is burning homes in the historic Gold Rush town of Chinese Camp, and several others are forcing evacuations in the Sierra foothills. Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties have been hit hardest.

Cal Fire is now lumping several fires in those counties into the “TCU September Lightning Complex.” The complex is burning over 12,400 acres as of Wednesday morning, according to Cal Fire.

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Video shows a house fully engulfed in flames in the foothills of the Sierra, specifically in Chinese Camp.

“There’s a house burning behind me right now, it’s kind of sad watching the houses burn up,” nearby resident Salena Moyoe said.

Sadly, the fire is one of more than 30 that are active in California as of Tuesday afternoon.

“We had thunder and lightning this morning, I’m assuming that’s how it started, that’s my guess,” Moyoe said.

Lightning could even be seen from the Bay Area. Video recorded early Tuesday morning in Belmont shows lit up skies, but viewers told our station in San Francisco they saw lightning or heard thunder in other areas too.

“There is ground to cloud lightning, as a matter of fact,” ABC7 News Meteorologist Sandhya Patel said. “The dry lightning that did occur, occurred in San Benito, Monterey, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties.”

While the lightning threat has subsided, fires from those past strikes are still possible.

“Lightning strikes are super unpredictable and we will generally see fires begin, of course immediately, but up to a week, maybe two weeks sometimes, especially out in the forests,” CalFire Battalion Chief David Acuna said.

Sadly, in Chinese Camp, the damage has already been done.

“It was a quiet little place, really; it will be pretty quiet now because there’s really nothing left,” said Moyoe.

California just marked five years since several lightning complex fires that destroyed thousands of homes. Three of them remain in the state’s top ten largest wildfires on record.

The LNU Lightning Complex burned nearly 1,500 buildings across the North Bay in August 2020. In the South Bay, another set of fires burned from Santa Clara County down to Big Basin State Park.