Deadly wildfires in heavily-populated north-west Oregon continued to grow on Friday, turning the sky blood orange red and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee encroaching flames while residents to the south assessed their losses.
Portland on Friday was deemed to have the worst air quality of any major city in the world.
At least 50 fires have burned over 800 sq miles across the state, while hot, dry weather conditions in California appeared to be easing the spread of multiple blazes that have blitzed historic amounts of land.
ABC News reported more than 20 dead or missing across the region. The wildfires are estimated to be six times greater than they were at this time last year.
In Washington state, 600,000 acres have burned. Governor Jay Inslee, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination on a ticket that put the climate crisis as the No 1 issue facing America and the world, said the abnormally dry conditions and high temperatures fueled by climate change were making fires “so explosive”.
“We talk about this as wildfires, we have to start thinking about it as more of a climate fire,” Inslee said.
In Oregon, the number of people evacuated statewide because of fires had climbed to an estimated 500,000 – more than 10% of the 4.2 million people in the state, Oregon officials say.
One fire approached Molalla, triggering a mandatory evacuation order for the community of about 9,000 people 30 miles south of Portland. A police car rolled through the streets with a loudspeaker blaring “evacuate now”.
With two large fires threatening to merge, firefighters were told to disengage temporarily because of the danger. Officials tried to reassure residents who abandoned their homes, and law enforcement said patrols would be stepped up to prevent looting.
“We haven’t abandoned you,” the local fire department said on Twitter. “They are taking a ‘tactical pause’ to allow firefighters to reposition, get accountability and evaluate extreme fire conditions.”
In northern California, a wildfire that destroyed a foothill hamlet has become the state’s deadliest blaze of the year. Ten people were confirmed to have died and the toll could climb as searchers looked for 16 missing people.
The North Complex fire that exploded in wind-driven flames earlier in the week was advancing more slowly Friday after the winds eased and smoke from the blaze shaded the area and lowered the temperature, allowing firefighters to make progress, authorities said.
In most parts of the state, red-flag warnings of extreme fire danger because of hot, dry weather or gusty winds were lifted.
Only a day or two earlier, the North Complex fire tore through Sierra Nevada foothills so quickly that fire crews were nearly engulfed, locals fled to a pond, and the town of Berry Creek, population 525, was gutted.
On Thursday, Butte county sheriff’s office Derek Bell said seven bodies were discovered, bringing the total to 10 in two days. At least four people with critical burns were hospitalized.
More than 2,000 homes and other buildings had burned in the fire, which began several weeks ago as a lightning-sparked collection of blazes north-east of San Francisco. The final toll is expected to be much higher.
A record 3 million acres have burned across California this year, with so many blazes simultaneously whipping through dry wilderness that many have converged into massive “complexes,” the scope of which the state has never seen.
On Thursday, the August Complex – the product of 37 fires in and around Tehama county – became the largest ever recorded in California at 471,000 acres.
That fire poses less of a threat than blazes closer to urban and suburban areas. Of those, the North Complex blaze near Oroville, mushroomed this week into a fire that was blamed for 10 deaths as of Thursday evening, with 16 people missing.
It has burned across more than 252,000 acres and forced 20,000 residents from their homes. Smoke covering the area has prevented officials from getting a grasp of the devastation Thursday.
Southern California has the worst air quality it has known for a generation, with the highest ozone pollution levels recorded since 1994.
Meanwhile, residents of the small Oregon town of Phoenix, near the California state line along Interstate 5, walked through a scene of devastation after one of the state’s many wildfires wiped out much of their community.
A mobile home park, houses and businesses were burned, leaving twisted remains on charred ground. Many of the residents were immigrants, with few resources to draw on.
Artemio Guterrez stood next to his pickup, surveying the rubble of his mobile home. His children sat quietly in the truck bed and waited for him to salvage what he could – a ceramic pot with a smiley face on it, some charred miniature houses from a Christmas-themed village.
Guterrez, a single father of four, had been at work at a vineyard nearby when he saw thick smoke spreading through Rogue River Valley. He raced home just in time to take his kids from the trailer park, where they live alongside dozens of other Mexican families.
“I’m going to start all over again. It’s not easy but it’s not impossible either. You have to be a little tough in situations like this,” said Guterrez, who had just returned from his mother’s funeral in Mexico.
Entire mobile home parks with many units occupied by Mexican immigrants who worked in nearby vineyards or doing construction were reduced to ash in Phoenix and nearby Talent.
As the fire approached Phoenix, Oregon, Jonathan Weir defied evacuation orders, even as flames 30ft high shot from trees. Fearing for his life, he drove his car to the entrance of a nearby mobile home park, where his tires began melting.
His home was destroyed as the fire hopscotched through the town of 4,000 residents.
“There were flames across the street from me, flames to the right of me, flames to the left of me. I just watched everything burn,” Weir told a reporter.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/11/oregon-fires-california-washington-deaths-wildfires
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