A large forest fire develops in the United States and forces new evacuations

Amid sweltering temperatures and drought in the western United States and Canada, The huge fire ravaging the state of Oregon escalated further this Sunday and the authorities ordered further evacuations.

Contraband, The largest of 80 major fires currently active in the United States, it spread overnight from about 1,100 km2 to 1,170 km2, or three times the area of ​​metropolitan Detroit.the authorities said.

The evacuations, which had already covered more than 2,000 people, continued on Sunday.

National Weather Service satellite images showed a huge plume of smoke rising from the Bootleg, in southern Oregon, to the Canadian border, hundreds of kilometers to the northeast.

But with the firefighters advancing on Bootleg’s western flank, global fire containment has more than tripled, to 22%.

Strong winds and widespread thunderstorms, however, remain a serious threat.

Firefighters noted that fast-growing fire at the resort town of Lake Tahoe in California was caused by lightning.

The fire called Tamarack, fueled by strong winds, developed explosively, covering an area of ​​more than 80 km2, without being contained.

The small neighboring community of Markleeville, on the Nevada border, was evacuated.

Scientists say climate change is amplifying droughts, which in turn create ideal conditions for the spread of forest fires.

The National Interagency Fire Center has reported “very hot, dry and unstable weather conditions in the interior Pacific Northwest, the northern Rocky Mountains and the plains of northern Minnesota” for the next few hours.

Nearly 20,000 firefighters and support personnel are fighting to contain the fires raging in the western states., he stressed. More than 10,100 km2 of forests have been burned this year.

Meanwhile, Canadian firefighters continued to fight dozens of fires on Sunday, including around 20 new ones in the province of British Columbia and 15 more in the northwestern province of Ontario.

Authorities in the latter province said a firefighter died in hospital as a result of an unspecified “medical emergency”.

(With information from AFP)

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