Grant Douglas takes a break during an evacuation as the Park Fire jumps Highway 36 near Paynes Creek in Tehama County, California, on Friday.
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Noah Berger/AP
FOREST RANCH, California – Thousands of firefighters in a wildfire in Northern California received some help from the weather watch after it exploded in size, scorching an area more than the size of Los Angeles. The fire was one of several that ripped through the western United States and Canada, fueled by high winds and heat.
Cooler temperatures and an increase in humidity could help slow the Park Fire, the largest this year in California. The intensity and dramatic spread have prompted fire officials to draw unflattering comparisons to the devastating, out-of-control Camp Fire in Paradise in 2018, which killed 85 people and burned 11,000 homes.
Paradise was again near the danger zone on Saturday. An entire city is under evacuation alert, one community in Butte County. Evacuation orders were also issued in Plumas, Tehama and Shasta counties. An evacuation warning asks people to prepare to leave and wait for instructions, while an evacuation order means to leave immediately.
Temperatures are expected to be cooler than average by the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean the fires we have are going to go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
As of Saturday night, the Park Fire has scorched 547 square miles (1,416 square kilometers) and destroyed 134 structures since igniting Wednesday, when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. It contains 10% and moves north and east near Chico.
The fire is larger than the city of Los Angeles, which covers an area of ​​about 469 square miles (1,214 square kilometers), and is currently seventh on the list of the 10 largest wildfires in the country, Cal Fire said in a social media post.
Andrea Douglas holds her head as she evacuates as the Park Fire jumps on Highway 36 near Paynes Creek in Tehama County, California, Friday.
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Nearly 2,500 firefighters are battling the blaze, aided by 16 helicopters and numerous air tankers.
Jeremy Pierce, Cal Fire’s division chief of operations, said firefighters took advantage of the cold weather while it lasted: “We had a lot of success today.”
Susan Singleton and her husband packed their SUV with clothes, some food and their seven dogs and rushed home this week in Cohasset, a town about 400 miles northeast of Chico. That’s when he realized that his house was on fire.
“Everything else has been burned, but getting us out, getting us out, that’s my priority,” Singleton said Saturday, standing outside his SUV while his dog rested. They all slept in cars outside a Red Cross shelter at a church that doesn’t allow animals, and Singleton, 59, said the next step was to find a place for the pets.
“We need to have a place to land and stop doing this, because this is what stresses me out,” he said.
A total of more than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) were burning in the US on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Flames leapt above a fire vehicle near Paynes Creek in Tehama County, California.
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In Southern California, a fire in the Sequoia National Forest tore 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 has been under evacuation orders.
Crews are also making progress on a complex fire in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman said. Traffic is backed up for miles near the border on the highway that connects Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The worst damage so far has been in Canada’s Jasper Rockies National Park, where 25,000 people were forced to flee and the park’s reputation as a World Heritage site was ruined, with 358 of the town’s 1,113 buildings destroyed.
Late Friday in eastern Washington, crews extinguished a wildfire near Tyler that destroyed three homes and five buildings, the Washington Department of Natural Resources said.
Two fires in eastern Oregon, Durkee and Cow Valley, are burning about 660 square miles (1,709 square kilometers).
And in Idaho, homes, outbuildings and commercial buildings were among the structures lost in several communities including Juliaetta, which was evacuated Thursday. The group of fires called the Gwen Fire is estimated to be 41 square miles (106 square kilometers) uncontained.
