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As firefighters said the flames appeared to be moving away from populated areas and into forests in neighboring Plumas County, residents who experienced the 2018 camp fire, which killed 85 people and burned more than 153,000 acres, remained nervous. Butte County officials have issued an evacuation warning for the small communities of Pulga and East Concow, east of Paradise.
“A few of my neighbors have said they are starting to collect their things,” Larry Petersen, whose home survived the campfire, told NBC branch KNVN in Chico. “Everyone is a little worried about this. Nobody just wants to go through it again.”
“We’re feeling this PTSD a little bit,” added Jennifer Younie, a resident of Paradise, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s just about being prepared.”
Elsewhere in the West, the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, the largest wildfire in the United States, torched an area larger than New York City and destroyed at least 20 homes, fire officials said. . It was about 7% content Thursday afternoon.
Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday dispatched California firefighters to Oregon at the behest of Governor Kate Brown, including crews from San Francisco, Anaheim and Alameda County, based on an order issued by the last week.
Lightning set off the Bootleg Fire on July 6 and the flames encroached on the traditional territory of the Klamath tribes, whose lands are in Klamath County, near the California border. Huge plumes of smoke can be seen for miles.
Tim and Dee McCarley could see trees exploding in flames in their rearview mirrors as they fled the blaze last week at the last minute. They had delayed their departure to pack other belongings and search for their missing cat.
“The sheriff’s department was there and they said, ‘If you don’t get out of here now then you’re going to die,'” Tim McCarley, 67, told The Associated Press as he, his wife and her stepson were resting at a shelter at the Klamath County Fairgrounds on Wednesday.
In total, more than 70 active wildfires in a dozen states have incinerated a combined area larger than Rhode Island, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, which tracks the coordinated effort to fight the fires. The center said more than 2.25 million acres had been burned since the start of the year, up from 1.7 million acres during the same period in 2020.
The center said on Wednesday that the United States was on the highest alert level of its scale based on allocated firefighting resources. More than 17,000 firefighters and support staff have been assigned to fight the wildfires, center spokesman Stanton Florea said on Thursday.
Last year, the center only declared a “readiness level 5” on August 18, which means how resource-draining this season has already been.
“We’re a month ahead of where we were last year – and last year was a historic season,” said Florea.
At least three states – Oregon, Washington and Montana – have declared emergencies.
Florea blamed record high temperatures in the West and a brutal drought, which led California Governor Gavin Newsom to ask residents last week to voluntarily reduce their water use by 15%, for exacerbating the weather. extremes fueled by climate change.
The fire seasons “last longer. The fires are more intense … we are seeing a sustained level of fire activity all year round, but it is certainly the pinnacle for us this year,” said Florea, adding that the country has “reached that threshold where most firefighting resources are committed”.
Fire danger warnings remained in effect Thursday for 2 million people in parts of Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho and Montana.
A combination of low humidity, gusty winds and dry conditions due to drought increases the critical fire risk, with the greatest opportunity for new forest fires to start or existing fires to spread Thursday after- midday and evening, when the winds are expected to be strongest.
One silver lining, Florea said, is that the monsoon season has started in the southwestern United States, limiting the potential for increased fire activity in states such as Arizona and the United States. New Mexico.
An extreme heat wave late last month sucked in vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, where firefighters say they face conditions more typical of late summer or fall than beginning of July.
A fire in Chelan County, central Washington, threatened 1,500 homes as well as orchards and a power plant, authorities said. Mandatory evacuations were in effect.
On Wednesday evening, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release that its detectives had helped the Chelan County Fire Marshal and federal fire investigators execute a search warrant at a nearby residence allegedly at the origin of the fire.
In north-central Washington, about 200 people from the town of Nespelem on the tribal lands of Colville were evacuated on Monday evening as the largest of five wildfires sparked by dozens of lightning strikes ravaged the grass , mugwort and wood. Seven houses burned down, but four of them were vacant.
“The need to act to protect our climate and mitigate the effects of climate change is becoming more evident with each year and each series of devastating fires,” said Andrew “Badger” Joseph Jr., president of the Colville Tribe.
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