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BLY, Ore. (AP) – The nation’s largest wildfire raged in southern Oregon on Friday, but crews cut back some nighttime operations as hard work and lower winds helped reduce the The flames spread even as wildfires continued to threaten homes in neighboring California.
The Bootleg fire, which destroyed an area half the size of Rhode Island, was surrounded at 40% after burning some 70 homes, mostly cabins, firefighters said.
At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and 5,000 more have been threatened.
The upper eastern edge of the fire continued to move toward Summer Lake, skipping the fire lines Thursday and triggering an evacuation order to have parts of Lake County lifted to “go now!” Firefighters said.
Winds of up to 16 km / h (10 mph) could propel the flames through the woods, but not at the rate seen last week, when the blast caused by the wind increased exponentially, Angela Goldman said. , responsible for fire information.
The fire, started by lightning, had spread up to 6 kilometers per day, driven by high winds and extremely dry weather.
There was good news on the lower part of the 625 square mile (1,619 square kilometer) fire. The crews had locked themselves in containment lines and on the lower southeast side, the crews were able to take a substantial position, allowing them to cut back on night patrols from what had been a “24-7 run-and- gun, ”Fire Information Officer Sarah Gracey said.
“For us, this is a pretty important step,” she said. “It’s not that easy to work in a black forest in the middle of the night.”
Authorities said on Friday they would monitor changing wind conditions throughout the day.
“The fire continues to challenge us, and we will continue to remain vigilant, work hard and adapt,” said Joe Hessel, incident commander of the Forest Department’s incident management team. ‘Oregon, in a statement.
That side of the fire had also burned in an area blackened by a previous fire, creating fuel gaps and reducing the spread of flames through grass, shrubs and wood, Gracey said.
In California, the Tamarack fire south of Lake Tahoe had burned more than 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) of lumber and chaparral at head height in National Forest lands. It erupted on July 4 and was one of nearly two dozen lightning-triggered fires.
The fire in Alpine County destroyed at least 10 buildings. Firefighters expected active or extreme fire behavior on Friday due to the afternoon gusts and temperatures approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
Embers blown from the flames sparked a new localized fire Thursday afternoon that blasted the freeway north of Topaz Lake on the California-Nevada line, triggering a new evacuation order in Topaz Lake Estates and surrounding areas .
The blaze was less than a mile from the Estates, a community of about 1,200 people in Douglas County, Nevada.
“Ground firefighters and planes continue to battle the growing area in exceptionally difficult weather and fuel conditions,” Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest said in an update.
He estimated that the new fire had already burned nearly 10 square kilometers.
Mandatory evacuation orders were issued Thursday in Plumas County, Sierra Nevada, west of the Nevada line, as the Dixie fire continued to escalate explosively eastward, becoming California’s biggest wildfire so far this year.
“This fire overtakes us at times,” Shannon Prather, the incident commander, said Thursday evening.
The blaze had burned more than 223 square miles (577 square kilometers) by Friday morning, destroyed at least eight buildings and threatened at least 1,500 more, fire officials said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Thursday evening that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had acquired 12 additional firefighting planes and nine had been immediately dispatched to the blazes. Cal Fire now has more than 60 planes and helicopters.
Extremely dry conditions and recent heat waves linked to climate change have made forest fires more difficult to fight. Climate change has made the West much hotter and drier over the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and forest fires more frequent and destructive.
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Associated Press videographer Haven Daly contributed from Gardnerville, Nevada.
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