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Firefighters in California and Oregon have made progress in fighting two large wildfires that burned about 240,000 acres in an extreme heat wave, officials said Monday.
The Beckwourth Complex, the largest wildfire in California, burned more than 91,200 acres. It was 26% content Monday night, against 8% Sunday, said firefighters.
The fire complex was triggered by lightning strikes in the Plumas National Forest in northern California, near the Nevada border, officials said. About 20 homes were destroyed in the small town of Doyle, firefighters said.
There were extreme fire conditions, California incident management operations section chief Jake Cagle said. The “probability of ignition” is 100%, which means any embers or matches in a bed of fuel will cause a fire, he said.
“This is the kind of extreme weather condition we face,” Cagle said in a video briefing Monday. “And it’s still early. It’s something we’ve been waiting for in August, for five, six, seven years – now we’re seeing it earlier in July.”
In southern Oregon, the Bootleg Fire had grown by about 5,000 acres as of Monday morning, an improvement from doubling the size of the fire in recent days.
The fire was estimated to be over 150,800 acres, or about 234 square miles. It is burning in the Fremont-Winema National Forest and started Tuesday afternoon. A cause has not been determined.
Firefighters said a smoke reversal allowed firefighters to build and strengthen fire control lines on Sunday. The blaze destroyed seven homes, a spokesperson for the Oregon Fire Marshal said.
Much of the western United States has experienced extreme heat that has set or equaled temperature records.
The heat wave has peaked in most areas, but excessive heat warnings will remain in place until Tuesday evening, the National Weather Service said.
California is emerging from what fire officials said was one of the state’s worst years for wildfires. It included four of the five largest wildfires in California history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The state’s fifth most destructive wildfire, the northern compound, which killed 15 people and destroyed more than 2,300 homes and other structures, also occurred last year.
Oregon also experienced a wildfire season that the governor said was unlike any in recent memory. More than a million acres burned, more than 5,000 homes and commercial structures were destroyed and nine people died, according to a government report released in January.
The Associated Press contributed.
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