FOREST RANCH, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of firefighters are struggling Wildfires in Northern California It got some help from the weather on Saturday, just hours after an explosion the size of Los Angeles burned. The fire was one of many in the western United States and Canada fueled by wind and heat.
Cooler temperatures and increased humidity will help slow California’s largest park fires this year. Its intensity and dramatic spread have led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons Terrible camp fireIt lost control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and burning 11,000 homes.
Heaven was close to the danger zone again. The entire city was under an evacuation alert, one of several communities in Butte County. Evacuation orders were also issued in Plumas, Tehama and Shasta counties. An evacuation warning calls for people to prepare to evacuate and wait for instructions, while an evacuation order means an immediate evacuation.
Temperatures are expected to be cooler than average by the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean the current fires are going to go away,” said Mark Senard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park. Maryland.
The Park Fire has burned 544 square miles (1,409 square kilometers) as of Saturday and is moving north and east without any containment. It has destroyed 134 structures since Wednesday’s blaze, when a man drove his burning car into a ditch in Chico and fled, officials said.
Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, was arrested Thursday at his home in Chico and was being held without bail pending an arraignment Monday, authorities said. There was no response to an email to the District Collector asking if he had legal representation or could comment on his behalf.
Billy Seay, an incident commander with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said at a briefing that the fire has been advancing 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) an hour since it started. But there was cautious optimism as weather conditions slowed in some areas, and firefighters were able to plan and deploy additional personnel. Nearly 2,500 firefighters are battling the blaze with the help of 16 helicopters and a large number of air tankers.
Jeremy Pearce, Cal Fire Operations Division Chief, said firefighters are taking advantage of the cold weather: “We had a big hit today. Our crew is strong and we get this when the weather is in our favor.
A fire in the Sequoia National Forest in Southern California has spread to the community of Havilah after burning more than 48 square miles (124 square kilometers) in three days. The town of 250 people was under an evacuation order.
Benjamin Gosell, fire information officer for the U.S. Forest Service, said firefighters and the sheriff’s office were working their way through the area to assess the damage and determine if there were any casualties.
“It’s still warm in that area,” Gosell said.
Overall, more than 110 active fires were burning in the United States as of Friday, covering an area of 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers), according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were due to weather Climate change is increasing The frequency of lightning strikes can withstand record heat and bone-dry conditions.
Doug Patterson, who has lived in Forest Ranch for 21 years, said he’s not leaving because he’s part of a small group of residents who stayed to look after the homes.
The community did mitigation work, including clearing vegetation around homes, but a valley near the town of 1,600 people had plenty of vegetation that fueled the fire, he said.
“When you have a fire of this size and with this intensity … there’s no real way to stop it. It just demolished the valley,” Patterson said. “It was absolutely devastating.”
Amanda Brown, who lives near where Stout was arrested, said she was appalled that someone would set fire to a region where memories of Paradise are still fresh.
“It’s unbelievably cruel that someone could deliberately do this to our community again. I don’t understand it,” said Brown, 61, who was about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the fire but was not ordered to evacuate.
Elsewhere, crews are making progress on another complex of fires in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrian Freeman said. Traffic was backed up for miles near the border on the main highway connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas as crews continued to battle a fire that started Friday when a truck crashed.
The worst damage so far is Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies, where 25,000 people have been forced to evacuate. Name of the park, a World Heritage Site, was devastated, with 358 of the city’s 1,113 structures destroyed. However, officials said the cold and wet weather was helping.
Crews halted the progress of a wildfire near Tyler in eastern Washington late Friday that destroyed three homes and five buildings, the Washington Department of Natural Resources said Saturday. The southern Columbia Basin fire burned trees and grass, and crews continued to work on containment lines around the perimeter.
Two fires in eastern Oregon, the Turkey and Cow Valley fires, burned about 660 square miles (1,709 square kilometers). Gov. Tina Codec offered her condolences Friday to the family of the pilot of a single-engine air tanker that went into the wild during separate fires near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest.
In Idaho, homes, buildings and commercial buildings were among the structures lost in several communities, including Juliata, where Jupiter was evacuated. Officials said Saturday they were continuing to assess the damage caused by a group of blazes known as the Gwen Fire, which is estimated to be 41 square miles (106 square kilometers) without containment.
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Rodriguez reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer, John Antsak, Rio Yamad, David Sharp, Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Terry Seay, Scott Sonner, Martha Bellisle and Amy Hanson contributed.
