Seen in a long exposure photograph, the Park Fire burns along Highway 32 in the Forest Ranch community of Butte County, California, on Thursday, July 25, 2024. A pilot was found dead in a small air tanker plane that crashed while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several Western states in the US. (Associated Press Photo/Noah Berger)
Communities in the US West and Canada were under siege from raging wildfires on Friday, as a fast-moving blaze sparked by lightning sent people fleeing on fire-ringed roads in rural Idaho and a human-caused inferno forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes in northern California.
In eastern Oregon, a pilot was found dead in a small air tanker plane that crashed while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several Western states.
More than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) were burning in the U.S. on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were caused by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region endures record heat and bone-dry conditions.
Others were human-caused, like the Park Fire burning in Butte County, California, just northwest of the community of Paradise where the 2018 Camp Fire killed 85 people and incinerated thousands of homes.
Carli Parker is one of hundreds who fled their homes this week as the Park Fire pushed close. Parker decided to leave with her Forest Ranch residence with her family when the fire began burning across the street. She has previously been forced out of two homes by fire, and she said she had little hope that her residence would remain unscathed.
“I think I felt like I was in danger because the police had come to our house because we had signed up for early evacuation warnings, and they were running to their vehicle after telling us that we need to self-evacuate and they wouldn’t come back,” said Parker, a mother of five.
READ: Oregon fire is the largest burning in US
More than 130 structures have been destroyed by the fire, and thousands more remain threatened. The state’s largest active wildfire began Wednesday when a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then calmly blended in with others fleeing the scene, authorities said.
Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested early Thursday and held without bail pending a Monday arraignment, officials said. There was no reply to an email to the district attorney asking whether the suspect had legal representation or someone who could comment on his behalf.
By midday Friday, the fire had burned more than 278 square miles (720 square kilometers) across the Sierra Nevada foothills above the city of 100,000. It remained completely uncontained.
Fire crews were making progress on another complex of fires burning in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, said Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman. About 1,000 people had been displaced Thursday by the lightning-sparked Gold Complex fires, but some evacuations were lifted Friday when the 5-square-mile (12-square-kilometer) fire was about 11 percent contained. Fire managers pulled about 200 of the firefighters off the line at the Gold Complex so they could aid efforts on the Park Fire near Chico.
Firefighter Christian Moorhouse jumps over a fence while battling the Park Fire in the Cohasset community of Butte County, California, on Thursday, July 25, 2024. His crew was able to keep flames from reaching the mobile home they were protecting. (Associated Press Photo/Noah Berger)
In Oregon, a Grant County Search and Rescue team on Friday morning located a small single-engine air tanker that had disappeared while fighting the 219-square-mile (567 square kilometers) Falls Fire burning near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest. The pilot died, said Bureau of Land Management information officer Lisa Clark. No one else was aboard the bureau-contracted aircraft when it went down in steep, forested terrain.
The most damage so far has been to the Canadian Rockies’ Jasper National Park, where a fast-moving wildfire forced 25,000 people to flee and devastated the park’s namesake town, a World Heritage site.
In Idaho, lightning strikes sparked fast-moving wildfires and the evacuation of multiple communities, including one where a man drove past a building and trees engulfed in flames as a tunnel of smoke rose over the roadway.
READ: Western US faces wildfires as millions under heat warnings
Videos posted to social media include a man who said he heard explosions as he fled Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southeast of the University of Idaho’s campus in Moscow. The town of just over 600 residents was evacuated Thursday just ahead of roaring fires, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery Complex, which breeds salmon.
“This a rough one, this sequence of fires,” said Robbie Johnson, a public information officer with the Idaho Department of Lands. “We’re using everything we’ve got — when you have those additional fire starts in an area, you have to say, ‘this needs aircraft over here, and over here,’ and make those rough decisions about the attack. We’ve got really smart people working on that.”
A vehicle drives past the spreading River Fire Thursday, July 25, 2024, near Myrtle, Idaho, before US Highway 12 was closed. Lightning strikes have sparked fast-moving wildfires in Idaho, prompting the evacuation of multiple communities. (August Frank/Lewiston Tribune via Associated Press)
There’s no estimate yet on the number of buildings burned in Idaho, nor is there information about damage to urban communities, Johnson said Friday morning.
Oregon still has the biggest active blaze in the United States, the Durkee Fire, which combined with the Cow Fire to burn nearly 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers). It remains unpredictable and was only 20% contained Friday, according to the government website InciWeb.
The National Interagency Fire Center said more than 27,000 fires have burned more than 5,800 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) in the U.S. this year, and in Canada, more than 8,000 square miles (22,800 square kilometers) have burned in more than 3,700 fires so far, according to its National Wildland Fire Situation Report issued Wednesday.