Important Takeaways:
- The Park Fire is now the fourth largest wildfire to ever tear across California.
- The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on Friday morning that the fire has grown to 397,629 acres and is only about a quarter contained
- At least 540 structures, including homes, have been destroyed
- Cal Fire said this week that as of Tuesday, wildfire activity is 2,816% higher than last year for the same time period.
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Important Takeaways:
- The largest wildfire in the U.S. swelled to over 600 square miles (1,550 square kms) on Tuesday night, bigger than the city of Los Angeles, fire officials in California said, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a wilderness area north of Sacramento.
- More than 5,500 firefighters from across California and other states were working around the clock to douse the Park Fire, burning in the state’s Central Valley, about 90 miles (145 km) north of Sacramento, the capital.
- The fire grew to 386,764 acres (156,517 hectares), becoming the fifth largest wildfire in Californian history, officials said.
- The Park Fire on Tuesday surpassed the size of the 2020 Creek Fire in Fresno County, which burned almost 380,000 acres (153,780 hectares), fire officials said. But it is still smaller than the state’s largest fire on record, the August Complex fire of 2020, which burned more than 1 million acres (404,685 hectares) in seven counties in northern California.
- The Park Fire – fueled by dry grass, brush and timber – is fast-moving, said Fire Capt. Dan Collins of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or Cal Fire.
- “This fire has lots of fuel that is receptive to burning, and it’s hard to get to,” he said. “Our fire line is 260 miles (673 kms) around, that’s the size of three Lake Tahoes. It can take two-three hours to get personnel in there over the terrain.”
- The National weather service says no rain is in sight this week, and hot and extremely dry weather will prevail, he said.
- Temperatures will reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8°C) on Wednesday and highs could hover at that level until next Monday, he said, with relative humidity dropping to as low as 7%.
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Important Takeaways:
- A magnitude 4.9 earthquake followed by several strong aftershocks shook Southern California early Monday afternoon.
- According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck at 1 p.m., with the epicenter roughly 13 miles northeast of Barstow in San Bernardino County. The impact was felt across a wide swath of Southern California, including metropolitan Los Angeles and northern San Diego County.
- The USGS initially measured the quake as a 5.1 magnitude but quickly downgraded it to 4.9. It was followed by several significant aftershocks measuring 3.5 and 2.7.
- There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
- Thousands of earthquakes are recorded in California each year, but the vast majority are extremely minor. According to the USGS, only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, and only about 15 to 20 are greater than magnitude 4.0.
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Important Takeaways:
- Northern California’s Park Fire has surpassed 368,000 acres burned as evacuation orders affect four counties—Butte, Tehama, Shasta and Plumas.
- Cal Fire reported that containment remained at 12% as of Monday morning. The Park Fire is the largest wildfire in the state so far this year and the sixth-largest wildfire in California history, burning 368,256 acres as of Monday morning, Cal Fire reports.
- The fire has scorched an area more than five times the size of the city of Sacramento.
- …spreading at a rapid rate of 4,000 to 5,000 acres per hour on Friday. Most of the burn area was in Tehama County with the flames spreading north toward Shasta County
- 4,200 residents are under evacuation.
- As of Sunday evening, 100 structures have been destroyed and crews expect this number to fluctuate in the coming days.
- The Butte County District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday they had arrested a man suspected of starting the fire. As detailed by the DA’s office, a man was seen pushing a car that was on fire down into the gully near Alligator Hole in upper Bidwell Park — allegedly spreading the flames that would become the Park Fire.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Park Fire started Wednesday afternoon in a park and grew from about 6,400 acres late Wednesday night to 45,550 acres Thursday morning, then topped 164,000 acres — some 256 square miles — Friday morning, Cal Fire said. Containment had been at 3%, but it fell to zero percent.
- Cal Fire arson investigators have arrested a 42-year-old Chico man on suspicion of starting the blaze, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey announced. Officials later identified the suspect as Ronnie Dean Stout II.
- His arrest followed reports of a man seen pushing a burning car into a gully at around 3 p.m. Wednesday in the upper part of Bidwell Park, where the blaze broke out, the district attorney said. The car slid 60 feet down an embankment and went up in flames completely, sparking the Park Fire.
- Ramsey said the man was then seen calmly leaving the area among other residents who fled as the fire rapidly grew.
- The Park Fire is currently the largest, but far from the only, wildfire burning in California. And farther north, in Oregon, the Durkee Fire grew so large and powerful it created its own weather.
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Important Takeaways:
- “This executive order directs state agencies to move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them – and provides guidance for cities and counties to do the same,” Newson said in a statement. “There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part.”
- Newsom’s executive order was buoyed by the US Supreme Court’s decision last month, which rejected arguments that ticketing homeless people for sleeping outside violates the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.
- Chris Herring, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Los Angeles, said “Before the Supreme Court ruling, cities were in the position where they would have to provide shelter offers before removing encampments,” “Now … they will be able to carry out these encampment sweeps with the very real threat of issuing people incredibly expensive fines of which people cannot pay and often results in a warrant or an arrest or can result in incarceration.”
- Herring said the timing of the order wasn’t surprising as Newsom seeks to “politically clear his name of the homeless crisis, especially as he’s in the national spotlight right now amid the presidential election.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The largest active wildfire in the United States has scorched almost 270,000 acres in eastern Oregon, as nearly 80 large active wildfires are burning in the US, including a California blaze that exploded in size overnight.
- California wildfire explodes in size overnight
- The Park Fire grew nearly 40,000 acres overnight to an area roughly the size of Washington, DC.
- The fire has burned an average of nearly 50 football fields per minute since it started Wednesday afternoon.
- Triple-digit temperatures and high wind gusts have fueled the fire’s growth.
- Oregon fires ‘scaled up quickly’
- The lightning-sparked Durkee Fire is the largest of 31 large wildfires currently burning across Oregon, which has been the hardest hit by fires in recent days.
- “We have been at this for a number of days, and those days just seem to keep getting harder and harder with the weather that we’re seeing in our area and the intense fire behavior,” Sarah Sherman of the Bureau of Land Management said in a video update.
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Important Takeaways:
- A dangerous heat wave will continue into midweek in much of the West as large wildfires burn out of control in several states, particularly California, Oregon and Washington.
- The heat wave has triggered warnings for millions in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. In addition, red flag warnings are in effect in many areas for dangerous fire weather conditions.
- The National Interagency Fire Center was tracking 60 uncontained large wildfires as of Sunday afternoon, most of them in the Northwest and Southwest.
- Several have exhibited extreme fire behavior, which makes them more difficult for firefighters to control. The Durkee Fire in eastern Oregon burned nearly 60,000 acres on Saturday alone, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, bringing its total to more than 100,000 acres.
- In California, the Hawarden Fire burned homes in Riverside, about 55 miles east of Los Angeles, prompting evacuations.
- All-time temperature records have been set or tied in the Northwest Territories, with other milestones falling in British Columbia as well.
- Extreme wildfire events during the past two decades more than doubled in frequency and magnitude globally, with the six worst seasons occurring during the past seven years, a study published last month found.
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Important Takeaways:
- Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation law Monday, which bans districts from requiring school staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.
- It also requires the state Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school.
- The law will take effect in January.
- At least six states have requirements that schools notify parents when minors disclose that they are transgender or ask to be referred to with a different pronoun, according to Associated Press reporting: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
- Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards said the new California law will “keep children safe while protecting the critical role of parents.”
- “It protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations,” Richards said in a statement.
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Important Takeaways:
- The grid is stable right now, California ISO said, but it said events that linger for days can overtax generators and cause outages. The grid operator expects higher electricity demand on Wednesday and Thursday, with Thursday set to be the hottest day this week.
- “If weather or grid conditions worsen, the ISO may issue a series of emergency notifications to access additional resources, and prepare market participants and the public for potential energy shortages,” the ISO said.
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