The cooler temperatures provided some relief to the thousands of firefighters battling Northern California’s Park Fire, which has exploded into the state’s largest blaze and prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency for three counties.
The fire’s intensity and dramatic spread have led officials to draw unfavorable comparisons to the devastating Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and destroying 11,000 homes.
Paradise was again near the danger zone. The entire town was under evacuation warning, which also affected several communities in Butte County. Evacuation orders were also issued in Plumas, Tehama and Shasta counties. Evacuation warnings tell people to prepare and wait for instructions to evacuate, while evacuation orders tell people to leave immediately.
Newsom’s State of emergency declaration The quake struck as thousands of residents were evacuating their homes in Plumas, Butte and Tehama counties. Cal Fire reported that 134 buildings had been destroyed and thousands remained at risk as of Saturday afternoon, but no deaths had been reported.
“Our firefighters and emergency response teams are working around the clock to battle these challenging fires, using all available tools to protect life and property.” Newsom said in a statement..
The Park Fire, currently California’s largest fire this year, has destroyed more than 350,000 acres (124,238 hectares). – An area roughly the size of Los Angeles – As of early Saturday morning, fires were burning in Butte and Tehama counties. Dry weather has allowed the fires to grow surprisingly quickly overnight, according to a report by the Fire Protection Agency. Cal Fire.
But Cal Fire Operations Chief Jeremy Pierce said firefighters are taking advantage of the cooler weather: “We’ve had great success today. Our teams are strong, and they’re out there fighting the fires while the weather is on our side.”
Temperatures are expected to remain cooler than normal through the middle of next week, “but that doesn’t mean the fires that are burning now are going to go out,” said Mark Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
Cal Fire Commander Billy See said at a briefing that the fire has been growing by 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) every hour since it began. But there’s also cautious optimism because weather has slowed the fire’s progress in some areas, allowing firefighters to plan and bring in extra resources. About 2,500 firefighters are battling the blaze, assisted by 16 helicopters and numerous aerial tankers.
Authorities say some of California’s ongoing wildfires are caused by lightning, but the park fire was started by arson.
Investigators allege the fire started Wednesday when a man identified as Ronnie Dean Stout was seen pushing a burning car into a ravine near Chico. Sacramento Bee.
Police said they arrested the man on Thursday after he and others fled the scene as the fire spread.
Stout remained in custody at the Butte County Jail Saturday and was scheduled to be arraigned Monday.
Amanda Brown, who lives in the area where Stout was arrested, said she was surprised someone would set a fire in a neighborhood where memories of Paradise are still fresh.
“It’s incredibly cruel that someone would knowingly put our community through that again. I can’t understand it,” said Brown, 61, who lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the fire but was not ordered to evacuate.
The growing threat forced many residents, including Carly Parker, to evacuate their homes.
Parker told The Associated Press that she and her family decided to leave their Forest Ranch home when a fire broke out across the street. “Police came to our house because we had signed up for an early evacuation alert, but after they told us we needed to evacuate, they ran to their car and never came back, so I guess they felt unsafe,” said Parker, a mother of five children.
She said she doesn’t expect her home to survive the fire unscathed.
Shelley Alpers, another evacuee from Forest Ranch, said she decided to stay with her 12 small dogs in her car outside the Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning animals were not allowed there.
She added that she doesn’t know if her house will still stand, but as long as her dogs are safe, she isn’t concerned about material things. “I’m a little worried, but not too worried,” she said. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Smoke from the Park Fire began affecting air quality by early Saturday morning, with the Tehama County Air Quality Control Agency saying conditions would be “moderately” to “very unhealthy” during the morning and evening hours as the smoke drifted over the area.
Meanwhile, firefighters were making progress in extinguishing the lightning-stolen Gold Complex Fire, which was burning across 3,000 acres in Plumas National Forest, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Reno.
In fact, most of the 1,000 residents who were evacuated from the area returned to their homes on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
More than 110 fires totaled more than 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) in the United States on Friday, the agency said. National Joint Fire Center.
The Darke Fire in Oregon, which began on July 17, is the largest active wildfire in the U.S. It was about 20% contained as of Friday, according to officials.
Heat waves and historic droughts resulting from climate change caused by burning fossil fuels are making wildfires in the western U.S. more difficult to put out.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
