TUOLUMNE COUNTY, Calif. (AP) — One of nearly two dozen fires burning across Northern California on Wednesday scorched homes in a Gold Rush town settled in the 1850s by thousands of Chinese miners driven out of a nearby camp.

The quick-moving fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills threatened the few remaining historic structures in Chinese Camp, forced the evacuation of its roughly 100 residents and closed a highway that’s a main route between San Francisco and Yosemite National Park.

It’s not clear yet whether any of the town’s handful of Gold Rush era structures — including a post office and a Roman Catholic church — were damaged in the fire that erupted Tuesday and continued burning without any containment.

A large number of lightning strikes early Tuesday set off at least 22 fires that have burned more than 19 square miles (50 square kilometers) in Calaveras, Tuolumne and Stanislaus counties, said Emily Kilgore, a spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the state’s chief fire agency.

The fires are spread across the region about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of San Francisco. There have been no reports of injuries, but several structures were destroyed in two of the fires, Kilgore said Wednesday. Damage assessments have not been completed.

Many of the fires are in remote and rugged areas, some with very difficult access, Kilgore said.

“There still may be fires that haven’t been discovered yet,” Kilgore said, warning that more evacuations may be necessary. Temperatures were expected to be in the 90s over the next few days with little rain in sight.

The largest of the fires has burned about 10 square miles (26 square kilometers) and is centered around Chinese Camp, where at least five homes burned in the town with a mix of freestanding and mobile homes.

Outside one house Tuesday night, seven people moved large tree branches away and shoveled sand onto the fire in a desperate attempt to keep the blaze from spreading from a house next door until firefighters arrived. A recreational vehicle on the property was damaged.

Chinese Camp, now a pass-through for tourists traveling to Yosemite, flourished in the 1850s as a stagecoach stop and supply hub for mining camps during the Gold Rush.

Thousands of Chinese came to California during the Gold Rush and faced persecution that included an exorbitant Foreign Miners Tax designed to drive them away from mining.

The town grew as Chinese miners who were driven out of a nearby camp arrived, according to Visit Tuolumne County. Originally called Camp Washington, its name was soon changed to reflect the thousands of people from China who settled there.

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Brumfield reported from Cockeysville, Maryland. Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said Wednesday that the state will work to eliminate all vaccine mandates.

“All of them. All of them,” he said during a news conference as the crowd stood and erupted in applause. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” He said the Florida Department of Health will work in partnership with the governor.

He said forcing vaccine mandates is “wrong” and “immoral.”

“Who am I as a government or anyone else, who am I as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body? Lapado said. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in [their] body? I don’t have that right.”

Florida requires current vaccinations for students going to public school. Those requirements are outlined on the Florida Health website.

The state is not banning vaccinations.

“You want to put whatever different vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision,” Ladapo said. “You don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision. That’s how it should be.”

Dr. Robert Malone, whom Kennedy recently appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine advisory committee, wrote on X that he had spoken with Ladapo on Tuesday, calling him “a measured scientist who is on fire to change the system for the better.” As a member of the advisory committee, Malone is instrumental in making recommendations to the CDC about who should get certain vaccines. He has been vocally critical of vaccines.

Ladapo has railed against vaccines in Florida in the past, saying that people under 65 shouldn’t get an mRNA Covid vaccine, at the time contradicting guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And during a 2024 measles outbreak in the state, he said that parents should watch for measles symptoms but could make their own decision about whether to send children to school. He did not encourage vaccination.

Ladapo’s announcement came as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed the establishment of the Florida Make America Healthy Again commission, which will recommend state-level integration of President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again effort.

The commission will be chaired by first lady Casey DeSantis and Lt. Gov. Jay Collins. Ladapo, Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Shevaun Harris and Department of Children and Families Secretary Taylor Hatch will also be members of the commission.

“The Florida MAHA commission will prioritize reforms that empower Floridians, reduce regulatory burdens and hold actors accountable for their conduct, while fostering incentives for healthy living and innovation,” the governor said.

Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio and hepatitis said Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.

Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a long-time skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.

In his announcement on Wednesday, at a press conference in Tampa hosted by DeSantis, he said that every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing “of God”.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” said Ladapo, who altered data in a 2022 study about Covid-19 vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who took one.

“People have a right to make their own decisions. Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Our body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God.”

Ladapo condemned lockdowns and vaccination requirements during the coronavirus pandemic as a time “when crazy things did happen”, and said that growing skepticism of vaccines were “reflections of God’s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression”.

Florida’s department of health currently has strict requirements for immunizations that must be given during childhood, which are posted to its website. No child can be enrolled in a Florida public school unless they have received a series of shots against a number of diseases.

Routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1.13m deaths among children born in the US between 1994 and 2023, according to a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published last year.

It estimated that the vaccine program nationally resulted in direct savings of $540bn and societal savings of $2.7tn.

Ladapo gave no details or timeline for the proposed repeal, but said his department would work with lawmakers and the DeSantis administration to make it happen.

“I love our lawmakers. They’re going to have to make decisions… people are going to have to make a decision,” he said. “People are going to have to choose a side. And I am telling you right now that the moral side is so simple.”

Ladapo also said that “it’ll be wonderful for Florida to be the first state to do it”.

“Since the 1980s, all states had school vaccines mandates. If Florida abolishes, it would be the first in recent times to do so,” said Dorit Reiss, professor of law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, who specializes in vaccines law and policy.

But she pointed out that there doesn’t seem to be a law introduced yet, which is a big if. She noted that Idaho attempted to end school mandates in April, but ended up carving out exceptions for existing mandates – effectively rendering that part of the law moot – after pushback from advocates.

“I would also add that one reason all states adopted them is that evidence showed school mandates reduce and prevent outbreaks. If Florida does this, it’s creating an unfortunate natural experiment with its children as guinea pigs,” Reiss said. “Children deserve better.”

The Florida department of health has been contacted for comment.

Melody Schreiber contributed reporting