Park fire in Northern California spreads to 360,000 acres

The Park fire in Northern California has grown to more than 360,000 acres under less favorable weather conditions Sunday, with fire activity picking up again, according to officials.

The fire near Chico, California, which started Wednesday, has traveled across four counties and was the largest fire burning in the United States on Sunday. It was caused by arson, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The fire was 12% contained Sunday afternoon, and more than 4,000 firefighters and other personnel were involved in the effort, said Billy See, Cal Fire’s incident commander. At least 67 structures have been destroyed or damaged, he said. Over 4,000 structures are threatened, according to Cal Fire.

A change in weather conditions had helped firefighters make progress since Saturday, when the fire was zero percent contained. Limited winds and a cloud of smoke shading the fire from the sun’s heat aided the effort.

But by Sunday afternoon, conditions had changed for the worse and again posed a challenge to firefighters. “This afternoon, the smoke has cleared, the sun has come out. We’re starting to get some solar heating, and we’re also getting increased winds in the upper canyons,” See said at a news conference.

About 4,200 people were under an evacuation order within the unincorporated areas of Butte County, Kory Honea, the county sheriff, said at a Sunday news conference. In total, more than 8,000 people were under evacuation orders in Butte and Tehama counties, said Jeremy Hollingshead, a spokesperson with the Yuba City Fire Department. Lassen Volcanic National Park was closed and evacuated Saturday as the fire approached the western edge of the park.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, warned that another prolonged heat wave was forecast for the fire zone this week.

“This fire will likely be burning for weeks, if not months,” Swain said. He added that there was “almost no possibility” that the fire would be contained any time in the near future.

Swain said that it was almost certain that the Park fire would end up among the top five largest fires by acreage in California. It could even become the largest the state has ever seen, he said, which would mean surpassing the more than 1 million acres that burned in the August Complex fire in 2020. The Park fire, which officials said was expanding by as much as 5,000 acres per hour, was the seventh largest in the state’s history as of Sunday.

Experts have warned that this fire season could be particularly bad in California, following two milder seasons in the state. Forecasters have predicted above-average temperatures in California this summer, and rainy conditions during the last two winters have promoted the growth of vegetation that could serve as fuel.

Across the country, more than 26,000 firefighters and other personnel have been working to tame active blazes that have scorched more than 2 million acres.

In Oregon, firefighters were battling a number of wildfires fueled by sweltering conditions and extreme lightning, including five that had surpassed 100,000 acres each. Of those, the Durkee fire, near the Idaho border, is the largest, covering about 288,000 acres since it ignited July 17. As of Sunday afternoon, that fire was 49% contained.

The wildfires are causing a significant concentration of smoke spanning from the interior Pacific Northwest to the western part of the Dakotas, as well as portions of Nevada and California, said David Roth, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center. Regions in the Plains and on the East Coast are also experiencing reduced air quality, Roth said, but the smoke levels there are declining.

Air quality alerts or advisories were in effect Sunday for parts of the Western United States, and they extended as far east as Pennsylvania and as far south as Texas. Forecasters cautioned that air quality could put more vulnerable groups, such as children and older adults, at risk.

More than 1 million people in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming were also under red flag warnings, indicating a high risk of severe wildfires within the next 24 hours.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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