Thousands of firefighters battling wildfires in Northern California got some help from the weather Saturday morning, hours after the blaze exploded in size, sending massive, swirling plumes skyward and burning an area the size of Los Angeles. The fire was one of several that spread across the western United States and Canada fueled by wind and heat.
Cooler temperatures and an increase in humidity on Saturday will help slow things down The Park Fire is California’s largest wildfire so far this year. A man has been arrested on suspicion of causing the blaze, which started in a park Wednesday afternoon and grew from about 6,400 acres to 350,000 acres by Saturday, covering about 546 square miles and 10% contained.
Weather conditions are easing, but that may or may not have an impact on the fires, said Mark Senard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Center in College Park, Maryland.
Temperatures are expected to be cooler than average by the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean the current fire is going to go away,” he said.
More than 130 structures have been destroyed so far, and thousands more are threatened with evacuation orders in four California counties: Butte, Plumas, Tehama and Shasta.
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Authorities said a man abandoned a burning car at the top of Bidwell Park in Chico around 3 p.m. Wednesday and quietly mingled with others fleeing the scene. The car was completely engulfed in flames. Authorities later identified the suspect as 42-year-old Ronnie Dean Stout II. A local judge issued an arrest warrant and Stout was jailed.
“It’s going to be another dynamic day,” Cal Fire incident commander Billy Seay said at a briefing Saturday.
He noted that the fire had advanced at a rate of 8 square miles per hour since its inception. However, there was cautious optimism as weather conditions slowed the fire’s progress in some areas, and firefighters were able to plan and deploy additional personnel.
“We’ve got almost three times the workforce today than we had yesterday morning,” he said. “We still don’t have enough.”
He advised his team to be aggressive and safe and take advantage of the better conditions they will experience in the coming days.
The National Interagency Fire Center reported more than 110 active fires burning over 2,800 square miles in the United States on Friday. Some are caused by weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region endures hotter and bone-dry conditions.
Amanda Brown, who lives in the same community where Stout was arrested, said she was appalled that someone would set fire to a region where memories of the disaster in Paradise are still fresh.
“It’s unbelievably cruel that someone would deliberately put our community back in that state again. I just don’t understand it,” said Brown, 61, who was about a mile from the fire but was not ordered to evacuate.
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Elsewhere, fire crews are making progress on another complex engulfed in flames Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrian Freeman said. Traffic was backed up for miles near the border on a section of the main highway connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas as crews continued to battle a fire Saturday, a day after a truck carrying lithium-ion batteries crashed and flipped onto its side. .
Evacuee Sherry Alpers, who fled with her 12 small dogs, decided to stay in her car outside a Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning animals were not allowed inside. After learning that the dogs would be kept in cages, she ruled out moving to another shelter because her dogs always roam free in her home.
Albers said she doesn’t know if the fire saved her house or not, but she said she doesn’t care about material things as long as her dogs are safe. “I’m kind of worried, but not that much,” she said. “When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
More than 27,000 fires have burned more than 5,800 square miles in the United States this year, and more than 3,700 fires have burned more than 8,000 square miles (22,800 square kilometers) in Canada so far, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The National Wildfire Situation Report was released Wednesday.
