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:
- 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:
- 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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