Evacuations, destruction as California’s largest fire of the year rages

LOS ANGELES – Throngs of firefighters were mobilised in California on July 29 to battle the state’s largest blaze of the year, which has prompted thousands of evacuations and already burned an area larger than the city of Los Angeles.

The Park Fire outside of Chico in the state’s north has been raging since July 24 in a rural region about three hours’ drive north-east of San Francisco.

It has now ravaged more than 149,700ha, according to the Cal Fire agency, making it one of the largest fires in state history.

No casualties have been reported so far, and firefighters benefited from a slight drop in temperatures over the weekend that allowed them to make some progress, with the fire now 12 per cent contained.

Nearly 4,900 firefighters have been mobilised, with 33 helicopters, 400 fire trucks and numerous planes battling the conflagration.

More than 26,000 residents were under evacuation orders on the afternoon of July 29, with the authorities calling for extreme caution due to a high risk of fire escalation.

“This fire is extremely unstable and unpredictable,” Tehama County Sheriff Dave Kain told a press conference on July 29. “We’ve seen many places that we thought were going to be safe to move back into erupt in flames again.”

The fire progressed during the first 48 hours at the speed of a person walking and has spawned fire tornadoes and generated smoke shaped like mushroom clouds.

‘I’m prepared’

The fire was able to spread quickly following multiple heatwaves that have struck California and the western United States since the beginning of June.

Vegetation “is still super, super dry”, said Mr Daniel Swain, an extreme weather specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, adding that this was caused by “a month of record-breaking heat and evaporative demand”.

While the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains burn regularly, the particular canyons where the Park Fire is located have not seen fires in decades, meaning there is plenty of fuel for the flames.

Despite the massive resources deployed by California, which has special expertise in firefighting, “it’s still beyond technology to address a fire at that scope”, Mr Swain said.

The enormous Park Fire brings back bad memories: The town of Paradise, where 85 people died in 2018 in the deadliest fire in state history, is only about 20km from the flames. Its residents have already been put on alert.

Some inhabitants of evacuated towns have chosen to stay until the last minute, such as Mr Justin Freese, who is waiting with a fire hose and about 38,000 litres of water at the ready.

“I’m prepared, but I’m not stupid,” he told The New York Times. “If there’s a 100-foot wall of flames coming, I’m not going to stay put and melt my skin.”

Multiple fires

The Park Fire was caused by arson, according to the authorities. A 42-year-old man was taken into custody on the morning of July 25 after being spotted pushing a burning car into a ravine the previous day, according to the local prosecutor’s office.

The US is currently battling about 100 large fires, according to the National Interagency Fire Centre, mainly in the west of the country and in particular Oregon, where an airplane pilot fighting the fires died last week.

The smoke generated by the fires has prompted the weather service to issue air quality alerts in many places.

In California, a fire that broke out last week nearly razed the historic gold-mining town of Havilah in the state’s centre over the weekend, but caused no casualties.

Repeated heatwaves and extreme weather events are accelerated by climate change, which is linked to humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, according to scientists. AFP