Happy Nice Mall

In Greenville, residents were also reluctant to evacuate as they were confident the fire would not reach their town.

“I tried to defend it until the last second and the fire threw me out,” said Jose Garcia, 34, who lost his home and taco restaurant. He said they only had seconds to escape. “We lost everything.”

Others said they were reluctant to leave after eviction orders were later lifted and were later reinstated.

“We were probably some of the last to get out of there,” said Teresa Clark, 49, who said she was evacuated for the first time with her mother, who used a wheelchair, wife and pet. The fact that the fires had not initially reached Greenville made him reluctant to leave for a second time.

But by Wednesday afternoon, explosive, hot flames were fast approaching. “I knew our town was rising,” he said. “That’s when the sheriff stood up and said, ‘You have to go,'”

“I was scared to death,” Ms Clark added.

Dan Kearns, a volunteer firefighter, described the fire as “raining from the sky” as he did his best to put out the fleeting fires in the town before the fire became unsafe to continue. The fires are “not just spreading, they are literally exploding,” he said.

“No one expected to lose the whole city.”

Over the weekend, Greenville, a Gold Rush-era town once lined with historic buildings, was left in charred ruins; lampposts were bent and nothing more than smoldering shells for trucks. The smell of smoke and burning inorganic substances was intense in the air. Everything was quiet, except for the sound of the trees crackling.