Extract from The Guardian
- At least 23 people dead in California, Oregon and Washington
- Washington governor: ‘We have to think of it as a climate fire’
Residents of Portland awoke on Friday like hundreds of thousands more in Oregon to fears of wildfires encroaching on them and the air thick with smoke pollution that dimmed the sun and turned the skies blood-orange red in some areas.
Historic fires are raging in the western US, with at least 23 people believed to have been killed so far in the worst-affected states of California, Oregon and Washington, with almost 100 fires consuming record areas of landscape amid tinder-dry conditions and high temperatures exacerbated by the climate crisis.
Portland was named as the city with the world’s worst air quality on Friday, according to the website IQAir.
At least half a million people in Oregon, a tenth of the state’s population, are under evacuation orders, while California is tackling a huge fire in its northern region deemed the largest wildfire in the state’s history.
Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, has declared a fire emergency, allowing him to activate evacuation centers, make special provision for the city’s homeless population and close the city’s famed Forest Park and other large green nature areas, where trees can fuel the fires.
South of the city, fires are moving so fast that some people who were evacuated and went to a shelter had to be evacuated again.
By Thursday afternoon, fires had already forced the evacuation of large parts of Clackamas county, the Portland metropolitan area’s south-easternmost segment, and home to about 420,000 people.
From late afternoon, RVs, trucks and passenger cars traveling north from the affected areas clogged the highways leading to Portland.
Not far from Portland, firefighters on Friday were concerned that the giant Riverside fire near the evacuated town of Molalla, which has already burned 125,000 acres on the west slope of the Cascade mountains, might merge with the deadly Beechie Creek fire.
That latter fire is immediately to the south, and has already burned 182,000 acres, destroyed the lakeside town of Detroit, killing a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother, who were attempting to flee its flames.
And all week, the fire has been belching black smoke over Salem, the state’s capital, 40 miles south of Portland. At least 50 fires have burned over 800 sq miles across the state, and whole communities have been incinerated in the south-eastern part of Oregon.
Meanwhile, hot, dry weather conditions in California appeared to be easing the spread of multiple blazes that have blitzed historic amounts of land.
ABC News reported more than 23 dead and more missing across the region. The wildfires are estimated to be six times greater than they were at this time last year.
In Washington state, 600,000 acres have burned. Governor Jay Inslee, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination on a ticket that put the climate crisis as the No 1 issue facing America and the world, said the abnormally dry conditions and high temperatures fueled by climate change were making fires “so explosive”.
“We talk about this as wildfires, we have to start thinking about it as more of a climate fire,” Inslee said.
Some parts of Oregon have likely not seen such intense blazes in 300 to 400 years, Meg Krawchuk, a pyrogeographer at Oregon State University, told the Guardian.
“It’s very important to think in terms of learning from [the situation] right now – because we may be getting a glimpse of what our future may continue to be,” Krawchuk said.
Although untangling the weather conditions from climate change is complicated, a combination of global heating – which is driving drier, hotter conditions and more frequent, extreme droughts – and a buildup of dried and dead vegetation that fuel fires are overall increasing the risk of bigger, more extreme fires.
Across the west, “there have always been fires”, said Stephen Pyne, a fire historian and professor emeritus at Arizona State University. But the extreme fires are becoming more frequent.
In Oregon, of 500,000 people under evacuation orders on Thursday an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 have already been forced to flee their homes, according to Governor Kate Brown.
Evacuation orders are staged: level 1, “be ready to leave”; level 2, “get set to leave”; and level 3, “go now”. All three categories make up the number of Oregonians, roughly 10% of the 4.2m state population, under the directives.
In Molalla, a police car rolled through the streets with a loudspeaker blaring “evacuate now”.
Firefighters south of Portland were told to disengage temporarily on Thursday because of the danger. Officials tried to reassure residents who abandoned their homes, and law enforcement said patrols would be stepped up to prevent looting.
“We haven’t abandoned you,” the local fire department said on Twitter. “They are taking a ‘tactical pause’ to allow firefighters to reposition, get accountability and evaluate extreme fire conditions.”
In northern California, a wildfire that destroyed a foothill hamlet has become the state’s deadliest blaze of the year. Ten people were confirmed to have died and the toll could climb as searchers looked for 16 missing people.
The North Complex fire that exploded in wind-driven flames earlier in the week was advancing more slowly on Friday after the winds eased and smoke from the blaze shaded the area and lowered the temperature, allowing firefighters to make progress, authorities said.
In most parts of the state, red-flag warnings of extreme fire danger because of hot, dry weather or gusty winds were lifted.
Josiah Williams, 16, was among the first of 10 known victims killed so far by the North Complex fire, in Berry Creek.
“He’s a kind, sweet boy who has the best personality,” his aunt, Bobbie Zedaker, had told the Guardian, while the family were waiting for news. His mother later confirmed his death on Facebook.
A record 3m acres have burned across California this year, with so many blazes simultaneously whipping through dry wilderness that many have converged into massive “complexes”, the scope of which the state has never seen.
On Thursday, the August Complex – the product of 37 fires in and around Tehama county – became the largest ever recorded in California at 471,000 acres.
That fire poses less of a threat than blazes closer to urban and suburban areas.
Meanwhile southern California has the worst air quality it has known for a generation, with the highest ozone pollution levels recorded since 1994.
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