Old Yreka mill catches on fire and locals wonder how

Yreka, Ca.-  An old plywood mill caught fire in Yreka last night sending flames high into the air and embers to the surrounding areas.

Yreka locals say that flames like that at an old mill is something they have never seen before.

According to Cal Fire, the call came in at 6:45 Tuesday evening as a smoke check call along Oberlin Road.

When firefighters arrived on scene they realized it was much more. As they arrived they saw flames coming through the roof of the old mill.

Across the street, Gina Nelson was at work. Nelson works at a dog grooming shop on the other side of Oberlin Road.

She says the fire was impossible to miss.

“One of my customers was sitting up in the front and she sat forward and was like, ‘Just a minute. I’ll be right back,” Gina Nelson says.

And that’s when Nelson says she knew something was off. She says initially there wasn’t a lot of fire but then it didn’t take long before the old mill was completely engulfed in flames.

Nelson exclaims as she describes her view of the fire, “Great big columns of flames! Big! Huge! Leaping out of the top of it!”

It was then that Gina Nelson realized that she needed to leave.

The owner of the property that her dog grooming store is on came up to her store and told her she needed to leave just in case embers came across the road and caused the nearby field of brush to catch on fire. So, Nelson grabbed her dogs and left.

She says she came back to her shop around 9:30 and still saw fire at the old mill.

But now the fire has stopped, after more than five fire agencies worked over night to eradicate the flames.

Efforts to put out a few lasting hot spots are in place and official clean up of the site has begun, along with the investigation into the how the fire started.

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