Thousands of firefighters were battling a blaze on Saturday Forest fire in the north of California whose size increased exponentially, burning an area almost the size of Los Angeles and being one of the several fires affecting the western United States and Canada in conditions of drought, heat and strong winds.
The Park Fire is the largest in California this year. Its intensity and dramatic spread prompted authorities to compare it to the monstrous Camp Fire, which raged out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and destroying 11,000 homes.
So far, more than 130 structures have been destroyed by the fire, with thousands more at risk, as evacuations have been ordered in four counties: Butte, Plumas, Tehama and Shasta.
The fire had grown to 480 square miles (1,243 square kilometers) by Friday night and was rapidly moving north and east after starting Wednesday when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a ravine in Chico before calmly blending into a crowd and fleeing the scene.
“There’s a tremendous amount of fuel out there, and it’s going to continue at this rapid pace,” Billy See, an incident commander for the California Department of Fire Rescue, said at a briefing. He said the blaze was moving at a maximum speed of 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) as of Friday afternoon.
Lassen Volcanic National Park officials evacuated staff from Mineral, a community of about 120 people where the park’s headquarters are located, as the fire moved north toward Highway 36 and east toward the park.
Communities elsewhere in the western United States and Canada were also under siege Saturday as a fast-moving, lightning-sparked wildfire sent people fleeing along fire-ringed roads in rural Idaho toward a new blaze prompting evacuations in eastern Washington.
In eastern Oregon, a pilot was found dead inside a small tanker plane that crashed while fighting one of the many wildfires burning in the western states.
More than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) were burning across the United States on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some of them were fueled by weather, as climate change increases the frequency of lightning strikes while the region faces record temperatures and bone-dry conditions.
A wildfire in eastern Washington destroyed three homes and five outbuildings near the community of Tyler, which was evacuated Friday afternoon, said Ryan Rodruck, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Firefighters contained the fire in the Columbia Basin in Spokane County to about a half-square mile, he said.
Source: AP
