California’s largest wildfire rages as fires rage on the US West

The Oregon Cow Fire, Flares, and Air Tanker Lost in the Collapse of a Great Area in Oregon on Friday. A Search for a Fuel Tanker That Missed in a Forest

A Grant County search and rescue team located an air tanker that went missing during the fight of a large area in Oregon. Falls Fire burning near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest. Bureau of Land Management information officer Lisa Clark said that the pilot died. No one else was aboard the bureau-contracted aircraft when it went down in steep, forested terrain.

The park with the most damage so far was Jasper National Park, where 358 of the 1,113 structures were destroyed and 25,000 people were forced to flee.

In Idaho, lightning strikes sparked fast-moving wildfires and the evacuation of multiple communities. The fires were burning on about 31 square miles (80 square kilometers) Friday afternoon.

A video that was posted to social media shows a man who said he heard explosions while running away from Juliaetta, about 27 miles southeast of the University of Idaho’s campus in Moscow. The town of just over 600 residents was evacuated Thursday just ahead of roaring fires, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery Complex, which breeds salmon.

There’s no estimate yet on the number of buildings burned in Idaho, nor is there information about damage to urban communities, officials said Friday morning.

The Cow Fire combined with the Durkee Fire to burn over 630 square miles in the state of Oregon. It remains unpredictable and was only 20% contained Friday, according to the government website InciWeb.

There are more than 100 fires burning in the United States as of Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

A Firefighter at the Gold Complex in the Plumas National Forest, Calif., killed in a Village of Chico, Wash., earlier this month

Alpers said she didn’t know if the fire spared her home but she didn’t care about material things.

“Everything else we had burned up, but getting them out, getting us out, was my priority,” Singleton said Saturday, standing outside her SUV as her dogs rested. They have all been sleeping in the car outside a Red Cross shelter at a church that does not allow animals, and Singleton, 59, said the next thing is to find a place for her pets to stretch out.

Fire crews were making progress on another complex of fires burning in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, said Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman. Most of the residents evacuated by the Gold Complex fires were going to their homes Friday. Some crews were working to put out the fire.

Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested early Thursday in connection with the blaze and held without bail pending a Monday arraignment, officials said. There was no reply to an email to the district attorney asking whether the suspect had legal representation or someone who could comment on his behalf.

The police came to our home because we agreed to sign up for early warnings and they wouldn’t come back so I felt like I’m in danger,” she said.

Hundreds of people fled their homes as the Park Fire moved close. Parker decided to leave her Forest Ranch residence with her family when the fire began burning across the street. She has previously been forced out of two homes by fire, and she said she had little hope that her residence would remain unscathed.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources said that the progress of the fire near Tyler in eastern Washington was stopped late Friday.

There were multiple fires in the US and Canada, including one that forced people to flee from Idaho and another in eastern Washington.

The staff at Lassen Volcanic National Park were evacuated from Mineral, a community of about 120 people, as the fire moved towards the park.

More than 130 structures have been destroyed by this fire so far, and thousands more are at risk as many of those were ordered to leave. It stood at 480 square miles (1,243 square kilometers) on Friday night and was moving quickly north and east after igniting Wednesday when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then calmly blended in with others fleeing the scene.

The largest fire in the state of California, the Park Fire, could be slowed by cooler temperatures and increased humidity. Its intensity and dramatic spread led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes.

California’s largest active fire exploded in size on Friday evening, growing rapidly amid bone-dry fuel and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters scrambled to meet the danger.

Susan Singleton and her husband packed their SUV with clothes, some food and their seven dogs and rushed to evacuate their home this week in Cohasset, a town of about 400 northeast of Chico. They have since learned that their house burned down.

In Southern California, a blaze in the Sequoia National Forest swept through the community of Havilah after burning more than 48 square miles (124 square kilometers) in less than three days. The town of 250 people had been under an evacuation order.

The forest service said that crews are making progress on fires in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line. The main highway leading from Los Angeles to Las Vegas was backed up near the border.

And in Idaho, homes, outbuildings and a commercial building were among structures lost in several communities including Juliaetta, which was evacuated Thursday. The Gwen Fire is a grouping of blazes that is estimated to be over 100 square miles in size.

The impact of the weekend thunderstorms in Butte county, Calif., on firefighters and the emergency response of Paradise and Plumas

The cooler weather is giving firefighters a boost, said Jeremy Pierce, an operations section chief for the Cal Fire.

Temperatures are expected to be cooler than average through the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean that fires that are existing will go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Paradise again was near the danger zone on Saturday. The entire town was under an evacuation warning, 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 leave and await instructions, while an evacuation order means to leave immediately.