California’s largest fire exploded on Friday night, growing rapidly in bone-dry fuels and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters battle it.
The Park Fire’s intensity and dramatic spread have led fire officials to draw unfavorable comparisons to the deadly Camp Fire, which raged out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and burning 11,000 homes.
The fire has destroyed more than 130 structures and is feared to destroy thousands more. Evacuation orders have been issued in four counties: Butte, Plumas, Tehama and Shasta. The fire has spread to 480 square miles (1,243 square kilometers) as of Friday night and has spread rapidly northeast since authorities said it was started Wednesday when a man pushed a burning car into Chico Valley and then blended in with others fleeing the scene.
“There’s a lot of fuel around and it will continue to grow at this rapid pace,” Cal Fire Capt. Billy See said at a news conference. He said the fire was growing at up to eight square miles (21 square kilometers) per hour on Friday afternoon.
Officials at Lassen Volcanic National Park evacuated staff from Mineral Township, population about 120, where the park headquarters is located, as the fire moved north toward Highway 36 and then east toward the park.
Other parts of the western United States and Canada also experienced tough conditions on Friday, with lightning-fueled fast-spreading fires sending people fleeing fire-ringed roads in rural Idaho and new fires forcing evacuations in eastern Washington state.
In eastern Oregon, the pilot of a small tanker plane was found dead after it crashed while engaging multiple aircraft. Wildfires spreading across several western states.
More than 110 fires were burning in the U.S. Friday across 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers), according to the National Joint Fire Center, partly due to weather, with record heat and extremely dry conditions being accompanied by more frequent lightning strikes due to climate change.
A fire in eastern Washington destroyed three homes and five outbuildings near the Tyler area and forced residents to evacuate Friday afternoon, said Ryan Rodlak, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Natural Resources. Firefighters have been able to contain the Columbia Basin Fire in Spokane County to about a half-square mile (1.3 square kilometers), he said.
In Chico, California, Carly Parker was one of hundreds of people who fled their homes as the Park Fire closed in. Parker and her family decided to leave their Forest Ranch home when the fire started across the street. She said she had already been forced to evacuate two other homes due to fires and had little hope of escaping their home intact.
“Police came to our house because we had signed up for an early evacuation alert, but after telling us we needed to evacuate they said they weren’t coming back and then ran to their car so I think they felt unsafe,” said Ms Parker, a mother of five.
Authorities said Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested early Thursday in connection with the fire and is being held without bail pending his arraignment on Monday. The district attorney’s office did not respond to an email request asking whether the suspect had an attorney or anyone who could comment on his behalf.
Firefighters are working to extinguish another Complex Fire burning in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada border, said Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman. Most of the 1,000 residents displaced by the lightning-stricken Gold Complex Fire returned home Friday, while some crews left to help fight the Park Fire.
“As the Western (Park) Fire has demonstrated, some of these fires explode and burn faster than you could ever imagine,” Tim Haick, the Forest Service commander for the Gold Complex Fire, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Reno, said Friday. “Fires don’t seem that bad until they are, and by that time it may already be too late.”
Forest Ranch evacuee Shelley Alpers fled with her 12 small dogs and decided to stay in her car outside the Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning the animals were not allowed in shelters and that her dogs would be caged, and she decided not to go to another shelter because her dogs had always roamed free at home.
Alpers said she doesn’t know if her home survived the fire, but she isn’t concerned about material things as long as her dog is safe.
“I’m a little worried, but not too worried,” she said. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Brian Bowles, who was in his car outside the shelter with his dog, Diamond, said he wasn’t sure if the mobile home was still standing.
Bowles said all she had was a $100 gift card she received from the United Way, which distributed it to evacuees.
“The question is, do I rent a motel room and get comfortable for the night, or do I put gas in my car and sleep here? It’s a tough choice.”
Search and rescue crews in Grant County, Oregon, found a small, single-engine aerial tanker Friday morning that went missing while fighting the 219-square-mile (567-square-kilometer) Falls Fire, burning near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest. The pilot was killed, said Lisa Clark, a Bureau of Land Management information officer. No one else was on board the aircraft, which was contracted by the Bureau of Land Management, when it crashed into steep, wooded terrain.
So far, Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies has been the hardest hit, with fast-spreading wildfires forcing 25,000 people to evacuate. It destroyed the town for which the park is named.It is registered as a World Heritage Site.
Several communities in Idaho were evacuated after a lightning strike sparked a rapidly spreading wildfire that had burned about 31 square miles (80 square kilometers) by Friday afternoon.
Videos posted on social media One man said he heard an explosion as he fled Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southeast of the University of Idaho, Moscow campus. The town of just over 600 residents was forced to evacuate Thursday just before the fire intensified, along with several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribe’s salmon-farming hatchery complex.
There was no estimate yet of how many buildings had burned in Idaho, and no information on damage in urban areas, officials said Friday morning.
In Oregon, the largest fire in the United States, the Darke Fire, continues to burn. It has combined with the Kaw Fire to burn about 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers). The fire remains unpredictable and was only 20% contained on Friday, according to the government website InciWeb.
More than 27,000 fires have burned more than 5,800 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) in the United States this year, while more than 3,700 fires have burned more than 8,000 square miles (22,800 square kilometers) in Canada so far this year, according to a national wildfire situation report released Wednesday by the National Joint Fire Center.
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Associated Press reporters Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Teri Cheah, Scott Sonner, Martha Belisle and Amy Hanson contributed to this report.
