Crews battle wildfires across western US

Flames consume structures as the Park Fire burns in Tehama County, California, on Friday, July 26, 2024. (Associated Press Photo/Noah Berger)

FOREST RANCH, California — Wildfires across the western United States and Canada put millions of people under air quality alerts on Sunday as thousands of firefighters battled the flames, including the largest wildfire in California this year.

The so-called Park Fire had scorched an area greater than the size of Los Angeles as of Sunday, darkening the sky with smoke and haze and contributing to poor air quality in a large swath of the northwestern U.S. and western Canada. The blaze spanned more than 550 square miles (1,430 square kilometers) of inland Northern California.

Firefighters were helped by cooler temperatures and more humidity on Saturday and made some progress, increasing containment from zero to 12%. The fire has drawn comparisons to the 2018 Camp Fire that tore through the nearby community of Paradise, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes.

Paradise and several other Butte County communities were under an evacuation warning Sunday. However, Cal Fire operations section chief Jeremy Pierce had some good news for the area, saying around midday that the Park Fire’s southernmost front, which is closest to Paradise, was “looking really good,” with crews focusing on extinguishing any remaining hotspots and removing other hazards over the next three days. He also said they don’t expect it to move farther into Chico, a city of about 100,000 people just west of Paradise.

But by Sunday afternoon, the fire continued to grow west, with flames crossing Highway 32 near Butte Meadows. Fire crews had originally hoped to use the highway as a containment line. Crews were aggressively attacking that portion of the fire on Sunday afternoon in an effort to keep it from spreading any closer to Butte Meadows, Butte County Fire Chief Garrett Sjolund said.

First responders initially focused on saving lives and property endangered by the Park Fire, but that has since shifted to confronting the blaze head-on, Jay Tracy, a spokesperson at the Park Fire headquarters, told The Associated Press by phone Sunday. About 3,400 firefighters are battling the blaze, aided by numerous helicopters and air tankers, and Tracy said reinforcements would give much-needed rest to local firefighters, some of whom have been working nonstop since the fire started Wednesday.

“This fire is surprising a lot of people with its explosive growth,” he said. “It is kind of unparalleled.”

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In places where the flames had died down by Sunday, signs of the devastation were clear. Mailboxes and vehicles were covered with pink fire retardant dropped by aircraft in Cohasset. At other locations in the community the husks of a washer and dryer set were surrounded by burned debris from a home, and a charred motorcycle was still propped upright, balancing on rims after its tires apparently melted away.

Another part of Cohasset was relatively unscathed, the Butte County Fire Chief said.

“We have an unburned island in that community that we are continuing to patrol and ensure that there are no hot spots in it,” Sjolund said.

The Park Fire burns along Highway 32 near Forest Ranch, California, on Sunday, July 28, 2024. (Associated Press Photo/Nic Coury)

Managing evacuation orders can be complex. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said authorities were about to downgrade the evacuation order to a warning for Forest Ranch when they learned a number of hot spots were reported nearby.

“That illustrates how rapidly things can change — we were all set to be able to reduce that order to get people back in there,” Honea said. The possibility of downgrading the order will likely be revisited tomorrow, he said.

Although the area expects cooler-than-average temperatures through the middle of this week, that doesn’t mean “that fires that are existing will go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

The Park Fire has destroyed at least 66 structures and damaged five others, Tracy said. Authorities initially believed 134 structures had been lost, based on drone footage, but they lowered the number after teams assessed the damage in-person.

“Unfortunately, that number will probably go up,” Tracy said. “Each day that number has potential to grow — our teams obviously don’t do damage inspections when there is active fire in an area.”

READ: Western US faces wildfires as millions under heat warnings

The Park Fire started Wednesday, when authorities say a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. A man accused of setting the fire was arrested Thursday and is due in court Monday.

The northern half of the fire still posed a challenge on Sunday, Pierce said, with crews using bulldozers and other equipment to build fire lines across rocky, difficult terrain and to try to stop the flames from spreading.

The Park Fire was one of more than 100 blazes burning in the US on Sunday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were sparked by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the western US endures blistering heat and bone-dry conditions.

Despite the improved fire weather in Northern California, conditions remained ripe for even more blazes to ignite, with the National Weather Service warning of “red flag” conditions on Sunday across wide swaths of Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, in addition to parts of California.

In Southern California, a fire in the Sequoia National Forest swept through the community of Havilah after burning more than 48 square miles (124 square kilometers) in less than three days. The town of roughly 250 people had been under an evacuation order.

Fires were also burning across eastern Oregon and eastern Idaho, where officials were assessing damage from a group of blazes referred to as the Gwen Fire, which was estimated at 41 square miles (106 square kilometers) in size as of Sunday.