Firefighters are struggling to contain a massive fire blazing in northern California

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:

The Park Fire keeps growing in Northern California, about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco. It's covering more than 350,000 acres and is forcing evacuation orders in several counties. At the farmers market in the city of Chico, community members are working to support those affected. Katherine Monahan of member station KQED reports.

SCOTT STEENSON: Here, please take this.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Do you guys have...

KATHERINE MONAHAN, BYLINE: Scott Steenson gives free coffee to a fellow evacuee. He roasted it at his home in Forest Ranch, a small community now threatened by the Park Fire. Another vendor, knowing that Steenson's home and business might already be gone, sends their kids over with some cheesecake.

STEENSON: Thank you so much, you two.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: You're welcome.

STEENSON: You guys are awesome. Alright, you guys be good for your mommy, OK?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: OK. That's birthday cake, and that's raspberry.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: We already...

MONAHAN: Many people around here have been through this before. Steenson started his coffee business after losing everything in the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the nearby town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

STEENSON: Once I saw that cloud, you know, right off of my, you know, doorstep, I was like, you know what? I've seen this one before, and it didn't end well. So maybe this time is a good time to get going.

MONAHAN: What Steenson saw were towering smoke columns pushed up by the Park Fire's extreme heat, blooming into the upper atmosphere in cauliflower shapes. This is the same phenomenon that forms over erupting volcanoes. Rick Carhart, spokesperson for Cal Fire, says that's part of what is making this blaze so difficult to fight.

RICK CARHART: That is a pyrocumulus cloud, which is basically - it's the fire creating its own weather. Firefighters are pretty well versed in the typical things that happen with a typical fire, and they can prepare for that. When the fire is creating its own weather, it's all unpredictable.

MONAHAN: Thousands of personnel are fighting the Park Fire around the clock. Still, it has already burned well over a hundred structures, many of them in the small rural community of Cohasset, where Larry Jansen had his home and bakery. He's selling the last of his bread here at the farmers market.

LARRY JANSEN: Our place is gone - burned, gone, totally gone - and our whole area burned up.

MONAHAN: Jansen says he has no idea what comes next.

JANSEN: We're staying with friends. Friends are taking care of us for right now, yeah. I think we made it out an hour before the fire went over the road and closed the way out.

MONAHAN: Firefighters are working to keep the blaze from destroying more homes as it moves north through dry, rugged country. For NPR News, I'm Katherine Monahan, in Chico, Calif.

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