California's largest active wildfire erupted Friday night, spreading quickly amid dry fuel and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters battled the danger.
The intensity and rapid spread of the fire in the park has prompted fire officials to draw unwelcome comparisons to the horrific blaze that raged in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and burning 11,000 homes.
More than 130 structures have been destroyed by this fire so far, and thousands more are at risk as evacuations have been ordered in four counties: Bath, Plamas, Tehama and Shasta. It covered an area of 480 square miles (1,243 square kilometers) by Friday night and was moving rapidly north and east after the blaze on Wednesday, when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a ravine in Chico and then quietly mingled with others fleeing the the place of the incident.
“There's a huge amount of fuel out there and it's going to continue at such a rapid rate,” Cal Fire incident commander Billy Seay said at a briefing. He said the fire was moving up to 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) per hour on Friday afternoon.
Lassen Volcanic National Park officials were evacuating personnel from Mineral, a community of about 120 people that is home to park headquarters, as the fire moved north toward Highway 36 and east toward the park.
Communities in the western United States and Canada were under siege on Friday as a lightning-triggered fire sent people fleeing along fire-strewn roads in rural Idaho to a new fire that prompted evacuations in eastern Washington.
In eastern Oregon, a pilot was found dead in a small refueling plane that crashed while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several western states.
More than 110 active fires were burning in the U.S. Friday across an area of 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers), according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were weather-related, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region experiences record heat and dry conditions.
A wildfire in eastern Washington destroyed three homes and five outbuildings near Tyler, which was evacuated Friday afternoon, said Ryan Rodruk, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Firefighters have contained the Columbia Basin fire in Spokane County to about half a square mile (1.3 square kilometers), he said.
In Chico, Calif., Carly Parker is one of hundreds of people who fled their homes as the fire neared the park. Parker decided to leave her Forest Ranch residence with her family when the fire started across the street. She had previously been forced to leave two homes because of the fire, and she said there was little hope that her home would remain intact.
“I think I felt unsafe because the police came to our house because we signed up for an early warning to evacuate and they ran to their car after they told us we had to evacuate ourselves and they won't be coming back,” said Parker, a mother of five.
Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested early Thursday in connection with the fire and is being held without bail pending arraignment Monday, officials said. There was no response to an email from the district attorney asking if the suspect had legal representation or anyone who could comment on his behalf.
Fire crews tried to contain another set of fires burning in the Plamas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman said. Most of the 1,000 residents evacuated from the Gold Complex fires, which were started by lightning, were returning home on Friday. Some crews were going to help fight the fire in the park.
“As evidenced by the (Park) fire in the West, some of these fires just explode and burn at a rate of spread that's just hard to imagine,” said Tim Heike, Forest Service commander of the Gold Complex Fire. 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Reno, he said Friday. “Fire doesn't look so scary until it doesn't. And then it may be too late.”
Sherry Alpers, a Forest Ranch evacuee, fled with her 12 small dogs and decided to stay in her car outside the Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning that animals were not allowed inside. She ruled out a trip to another shelter after learning the dogs would be kept in cages, as her dogs had always roamed freely in her home.
Alpers said she doesn't know if the fire spared her home or not, but she said as long as her dogs are safe, she's not worried about material things.
“I'm kind of worried, but not really,” she said. “If it's gone, it's gone.”
Brian Bowles also stayed in his car outside the shelter with his dog, Damon. He said he didn't know if his house was on wheels.
Bowles said he only has a $100 gift card he received from the United Way, which distributed them to evacuees.
“Now the question is, will I get a comfortable motel room for one night? Or should I put gas in the car and sleep here?” he said. “Difficult choice”.
In Oregon, the Grant County Search and Rescue team on Friday morning found a small, single-engine air tanker that went missing while battling the 219-square-mile (567-square-kilometer) Falls Fire burning near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest. . The pilot died, Bureau of Land Management employee Lisa Clark said. No one else was on board the plane taken from the office when it crashed in steep wooded terrain.
The worst damage so far has been in Jasper National Park in Canada's Rockies, where a fast-moving wildfire forced 25,000 people to flee and devastated the park's namesake town, a World Heritage Site.
In Idaho, lightning strikes caused rapid wildfires and the evacuation of several communities. On Friday afternoon, fires were burning on an area of about 80 square kilometers.
Videos posted on social media show a man who said he heard explosions as he fled Juliet, about 43 kilometers southeast of the University of Idaho campus in Moscow. The town of just over 600 residents was evacuated Thursday ahead of the fires, along with several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribal Salmon Hatchery.
There are still no estimates of the number of buildings burned in Idaho, and there is no information on damage to urban communities, officials said Friday morning.
Oregon still has the largest active fire in the United States, the Durkee Fire, which combined with the Kaw Fire to burn nearly 1,630 square kilometers. It remains unpredictable and was only 20 percent contained on Friday, according to government website InciWeb.
The National Interagency Fire Center said more than 27,000 fires have burned more than 15,000 square kilometers in the U.S. this year, and in Canada more than 22,800 square kilometers have burned in more than 3,700 fires, according to the National Fire Situation Report wild terrain. issued on Wednesday.
