Fire crews made progress in the battle against major wildfires that have left a trail of damage in the western United States, but thousands of firefighters continue to tackle the flames.
In northern California, the so-called Park fire, grew at ferocious speeds to become one of the largest wildfires in the state this year. In southern California, a blaze swept through the historic mining town of Havilah. And in Oregon and Idaho, authorities were assessing the damage caused by several large wildfires raging there.
The fires are some of more than 100 blazes burning in the US at the moment. Some were lit, but many were sparked by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the western US endures blistering heat and bone-dry conditions.
As of Monday, the Park fire had scorched an area greater than the city of Los Angeles, darkening the sky with smoke and engaging thousands of firefighters. The blaze spanned more than 360,000 acres near the university town of Chico.
The fire started Wednesday, when authorities say a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. A man accused of setting the fire is due in court Monday.
Officials did not expect the fire to move farther into Chico, and over the next three days, crews plan to extinguish hot spots and remove hazards, said Jeremy Pierce, Cal Fire operations section chief, on Sunday.
The fire over the weekend encroached on Paradise, the town that in 2018 lost 85 people to a ferocious wildfire. Paradise and several other Butte county communities were under an evacuation warning Sunday. Yet the fire’s southernmost front, which is closest to Paradise, was “looking really good”, Pierce said.
Winds and temperatures were expected to increase slightly amid a drop in humidity, officials said in an update early Monday.
Nearly 4,000 firefighters are battling the fire, aided by numerous helicopters and air tankers. Reinforcements are expected to give much-needed rest to local firefighters, some of whom have been working nonstop since Wednesday, said Jay Tracy, a Park fire headquarters spokesperson.
“This fire is surprising a lot of people with its explosive growth,” he said. “It is kind of unparalleled.”
In southern California, about 2,000 people were ordered to evacuate because of a fire sweeping through the Sequoia national forest. The wind-driven blaze, known as the Borel fire, was fed by dried, dead plants and moved fast and had eaten up more than 53,000 acres by Monday.
No fatalities have been reported in the Park and Borel fires, but some people were increasing the danger for everyone by disregarding evacuation orders, said Andrew Freeborn of the Kern county fire department.
“When people are trying to ignore the orders and later call for rescue, that takes firefighters away from the task of fighting the fires,” he said. “This fire is moving at a pace and with such intensity that individuals should not be thinking they can wait until the last minute. They need to get out of the way.”
The historic mining town of Havilah and several other communities were “heavily impacted” by the fires, but it was too soon to count the burned homes, Freeborn said.
Although cooler-than-average temperatures are expected through the middle of this week, that doesn’t mean existing fires will disappear, said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s weather prediction center in College Park, Maryland.
The National Weather Service issued “red flag” warnings Monday for wide swaths of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, in addition to parts of California, meaning dry fuels and stronger winds were increasing the fire danger, the weather service said.
Fires burned across eastern Oregon and eastern Idaho, where officials were assessing damage from a group of blazes called the Gwen fire, which was estimated at 43 sq miles (111 sq km) as of Sunday.