A tanker plane with a pilot on board went missing in eastern Oregon while battling one of the many wildfires burning across several western states, and searches so far have been unproductive, authorities said Friday.
The plane, contracted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, went missing on Thursday while fighting the Falls Fire near the town of Seneca on the edge of Malheur National Forest. The blaze has grown to 219 square miles (567 square kilometers) and is 55 percent contained, according to the government website InciWeb.
Thomas Kyle Millward, a spokesman for Northwest Incident Management Team 8, said authorities received a report of the plane going missing at about 6:53 p.m. Thursday. The pilot was the only passenger on board.
Climate change has caused the region to endure record-breaking heat and extremely dry conditions, increasing the frequency of lightning strikes. Overall, more than 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers) have burned in the U.S. Pacific Northwest so far this summer, with wildfires also spreading in western Canada. Fill the sky with smoke and haze.
In California, the state’s largest wildfire has destroyed more than 130 structures and puts thousands more at risk. Authorities say the Park Fire started Wednesday when a man drove his burning car into a valley in Chico, then quietly escaped with others fleeing the scene. Authorities say the 42-year-old suspect was arrested early Thursday and is being held without bail until his arraignment on Monday.
By Friday morning, the fire was completely out of control and had burned more than 257 square miles (666 square kilometers) of the Sierra Nevada foothills above the city of 100,000 people. Butte County Sheriff Corey Honea said late Thursday that evacuation orders had been issued for about 4,000 residents in unincorporated areas of Butte County and 400 residents in Chico. Two minor injuries were reported, 134 structures were destroyed, and about 4,200 structures were at risk.
“Due to dry fuels, hot weather, low humidity and wind, the fire quickly began to outpace our firefighting resources,” Butte County Fire Chief Garrett Shorland said.
The Park Fire burning near Chico is California’s largest this year. Associated Press correspondent Donna Warder reports.
The Park Fire was burning northwest of Paradise, a Butte County community where the infamous Camp Fire in 2018 killed 85 people and burned thousands of homes, making it California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire. Butte County Sheriff Corey Honea said he “expresses his regret and outrage that we’ve found ourselves in this situation again.”
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.
Oregon remains home to the largest fire in the United States. The Dalke Fire, combined with the Kaw Fire, has burned about 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers). The fire remains unpredictable and was only 20 percent contained as of Friday, according to the government website InciWeb.
Lightning strikes sparked fast-spreading wildfires in Idaho, prompting evacuations in several areas, including one where a man said trees were engulfed in flames and a tunnel of smoke rose above the road as he drove past a property.
Videos posted on social media included one of a man who 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 spread, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribe’s hatchery complex, where salmon are farmed to replenish dwindling keystone species.
“This series of fires is tough,” said Robbie Johnson, a public information officer for the Idaho Bureau of Land Management. “We’re using everything we’ve got. When more fires start in an area, we have to say, ‘We need aircraft here, we need aircraft here,’ and we have to make broad judgment calls about attacking. We’ve got some very good people working on that.”
Governor Johnson said Friday morning that there was no estimate yet of how many buildings had burned in Idaho, and no information on damage in urban areas.
Elsewhere in California, about 1,000 people were forced to evacuate Thursday due to the lightning-sparked Gold Complex Fire. The blaze has burned about 5 square miles (12 km) of brush and forest in California’s Plumas National Forest, about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Reno, near the Nevada border. Some evacuations were lifted Friday when the fire was 11 percent contained.
Also inland in Southern California, firefighters battled a small fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the hills just above the city of Lake Elsinore in Riverside County. The Macy Fire was 15% contained as of early Friday morning, destroying one unidentified structure. In rural north San Diego County, the three-day-old Grove Fire is 25% contained after a day of minimal growth.
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Associated Press writers Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Scott Sonner, Martha Belisle and Amy Hanson contributed to this report.
