FOREST RANCH, California – Wildfires in the western United States and Canada placed millions of people under air quality alerts on Sunday, while thousands of firefighters fought the flamesincluding the largest wildfire in California this year.
The so-called Park Fire burned an area larger than the size of Los Angeles on Sunday, darkening the sky with smoke and haze and contributing to poor air quality across a large swath of the northwestern U.S. and western Canada. The fire spanned more than 550 square miles (1,430 square kilometers) inland in Northern California.
Firefighters were helped by cooler temperatures and more humidity on Saturday and made some progress, increasing containment from zero to 12%. The fire drew comparisons to that of 2018 Campfire which devastated the neighboring community of Paradise, killing 85 people and burning down 11,000 homes.
Paradise and several other Butte County communities were under an evacuation warning Sunday. However, Cal Fire Operations Section Chief Jeremy Pierce had some good news for the area, saying around noon that the Park Fire’s southernmost front, which is closest to Paradise, was “looking very good,” with crews focusing on extinguishing any remaining hotspots and removing other hazards over the next three days. He also said they don’t expect the movement to deepen in Chico, a city of about 100,000 people west of Paradise.
But on Sunday afternoon, the fire continued to grow west, with flames crossing Highway 32 near Butte Meadows. Firefighters originally hoped to use the highway as a containment line. Crews were aggressively attacking that part of the fire Sunday afternoon in an effort to prevent it from spreading closer to Butte Meadows, Butte County Fire Chief Garrett Sjolund said.
First responders initially focused on saving lives and property threatened by the Park Fire, but have since shifted to tackling the blaze head-on, Jay Tracy, spokesman for Park Fire headquarters, told The Associated Press by phone Sunday. About 3,400 firefighters are battling the blaze, aided by several helicopters and air tankers, and Tracy said the reinforcements would give much-needed rest to local firefighters, some of whom have been working around the clock since the blaze broke out on Wednesday.
“This fire is surprising a lot of people with its explosive growth,” he said. “It’s something incomparable.”
Where the flames had subsided by Sunday, signs of the devastation were clear. Mailboxes and vehicles were covered with pink fire retardant dropped from aircraft in Cohasset. Elsewhere in the community, the shells of a washer and dryer set were surrounded by the burned remains of a house, and a charred motorcycle was still propped upright, balancing on its rims after its tires had apparently melted.
Another part of Cohasset was relatively unscathed, the Butte County fire chief said.
“We have an unburned island in that community that we continue to patrol and make sure there are no hotspots on it,” Sjolund said.
Managing evacuation orders can be complex. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said authorities were about to downgrade the evacuation order to a warning for Forest Ranch when they learned that several hot spots were reported nearby.
“It illustrates how quickly things can change — we were all prepared to be able to ease this order to bring people back,” Honea said. The possibility of downgrading the order will likely be reviewed tomorrow, he said.
While the area is expecting cooler-than-average temperatures through the middle of this week, that doesn’t mean “that existing fires are going to go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park. , Maryland.
The Park Fire destroyed at least 66 structures and damaged five others, Tracy said. Authorities initially believed 134 structures were lost, based on drone footage, but narrowed the number after crews assessed the damage in person.
“Unfortunately, that number will likely increase,” Tracy said. “Every day that number has the potential to grow – our crews obviously don’t do damage inspections when there is an active fire in an area.”
The Park fire began Wednesday when authorities say a man pushed a burning car down an embankment in Chico and then fled. A man accused of setting the fire was arrested on Thursday and is due in court on Monday.
The northern half of the fire still posed a challenge Sunday, Pierce said, with crews using bulldozers and other equipment to build fire lines through rocky, difficult terrain and to try to stop the flames from spreading.
The Park Fire was one of more than 100 fires burning across the U.S. on Sunday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were caused by the weather, with increase in climate change the frequency of lightning strikes as the western US faces scorching heat and extremely dry conditions.
Despite improving fire weather in Northern California, conditions remained ripe for even more fires to start, with the National Weather Service warning of “red flag” conditions on Sunday across wide swaths of Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, as well as parts of California.
In Southern California, a fire 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 about 250 inhabitants was under evacuation order.
Fires also raged in eastern Oregon and eastern Idaho, where authorities were assessing damage from a group of fires known as the Gwen Fire that was estimated to be 41 square miles (106 square kilometers) in size on Sunday.
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Rodriguez reported from San Francisco. The following AP reporters from across the U.S. contributed: David Sharp, Becky Bohrer, John Antczak, Rio Yamat, David Sharp, Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Terry Chea, Scott Sonner, Martha Bellisle and Amy Hanson.
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