California’s largest wildfire grows rapidly as fires rage across the western US

On Friday night, California’s largest active fire exploded in size, spreading rapidly amid bone-dry fuel and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters desperately tried to contain the danger.

Because of the Park Fire’s intensity and dramatic spread, fire officials drew unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire that raged out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and burning 11,000 homes.

More than 130 buildings have been destroyed by the fire so far, and thousands more are at risk as evacuations have been ordered in four counties: Butte, Plumas, Tehama and Shasta. As of Friday evening, the fire was 470 square miles (1,243 square kilometers) in area and was spreading rapidly north and east after it broke out Wednesday when a man pushed a burning car into a ravine in Chico and then calmly mingled with other refugees, according to authorities.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fuel out there and it’s going to continue at this rapid pace,” Cal Fire Chief Billy See said at a briefing. He said the fire was spreading at up to 13 square miles per hour on Friday afternoon.

Lassen Volcanic National Park officials evacuated employees from Mineral, a community of about 120 people where the park headquarters are located, as the fire spread north toward Highway 36 and east toward the park.

Communities in other parts of the western United States and Canada also came under fire on Friday: In rural Idaho, a fire sparked by lightning forced people to flee, and a new fire broke out in eastern Washington, forcing evacuations.

A pilot was found dead in eastern Oregon. The plane crashed while fighting one of the numerous forest fires that are currently spreading in several western states.

More than 110 active fires were burning across 2,700 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) across the United States on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some of those were weather-related: Climate change has increased the frequency of lightning strikes while the region is suffering from record heat and bone-dry conditions.

A fire in eastern Washington destroyed three homes and five outbuildings near the community of Tyler, which was evacuated Friday afternoon, said Ryan Rodruck, spokesman for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Firefighters were able to contain the fire in the Columbia Basin in Spokane County to about half a square mile (1.3 square kilometers), he said.

Carli Parker is one of hundreds who fled their homes in Chico, California, as the Park Fire approached. Parker decided to leave her Forest Ranch home with her family as the fire broke out across the street. She had previously been forced to leave two homes because of fires, and she said she had little hope that her home would be unscathed.

“I think I felt in danger because the police had come to our house because we had signed up for early evacuation alerts. They ran to their vehicle after telling us that we had to evacuate ourselves and they were not coming back,” said Parker, a mother of five.

Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico was arrested early Thursday in connection with the fire and was being held without bail pending arraignment Monday, officials said. An email to the district attorney asking if the suspect had legal representation or someone who could comment on his behalf was not responded to.

Firefighters were making progress battling another fire complex in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada border, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman said. Most of the 1,000 residents evacuated because of the lightning-sparked fires in the Gold Complex returned home Friday. Some crews were diverted to help fight the Park Fire.

“As the (Park) Fire to the west shows, some of these fires explode and spread at a rate that’s hard to imagine,” Tim Hike, Forest Service incident commander for the Gold Complex fire about 50 miles northwest of Reno, said Friday. “The fire doesn’t look that bad at first, until it gets there. And then it might just be too late.”

Evacuee Sherry Alpers of Forest Ranch fled with her 12 small dogs, choosing to stay in her car outside a Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning that animals would not be allowed inside. She ruled out driving to another shelter after learning that the dogs would be kept in cages, since her dogs always roamed free at her home.

Alpers said she doesn’t know whether her house was spared from the fire or not, but she added that as long as her dogs are safe, she doesn’t care about material things.

“I’m a little worried, but not that much,” she said. “When it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Brian Bowles also spent the night in his car with his dog Diamon in front of the animal shelter. He said he did not know if his RV was still there.

Bowles said he only has a $100 gift card he received from United Way, which distributed the gifts to evacuees.

“Now the question is: Do I get a comfortable motel room for one night? Or do I fill up the car and sleep here?” he said. “Tough decision.”

In Oregon, a Grant County search and rescue team on Friday morning found a small, single-engine firefighting plane that had gone missing while battling the 567-square-kilometer Falls Fire near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest. The pilot died, said Lisa Clark, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management. No one else was on board the bureau-contracted plane when it crashed in steep, wooded terrain.

The greatest damage so far has been caused in Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where a rapidly spreading forest fire forced 25,000 people to flee and devastated the park’s eponymous town, which is a World Heritage Site.

August Frank/AP/Lewiston Tribune

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Lewiston-Tribune

In Idaho, lightning strikes triggered rapidly spreading wildfires and led to the evacuation of numerous communities. By Friday afternoon, the fires were raging over an area of ​​around 80 square kilometers.

A man can be seen on social media saying he heard explosions as he fled Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southeast of the University of Idaho campus in Moscow. The town of just over 600 residents was evacuated Thursday shortly before the fires broke out, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery Complex, which raises salmon.

There are no estimates yet of the number of buildings burned in Idaho and no information on the damage in urban areas, officials said Friday morning.

Oregon still has the largest active fire in the U.S., the Durkee Fire, which along with the Cow Fire has burned nearly 630 square miles. The fire remains unpredictable and was only 20 percent contained as of Friday, according to government website InciWeb.

The National Interagency Fire Center said more than 27,000 fires in the United States have burned a total of more than 15,000 square kilometers this year, and in Canada more than 3,700 fires have burned more than 22,800 square kilometers so far, according to the National Wildland Fire Situation Report released Wednesday.

Copyright: NPR