(Los Angeles) More than 4,000 people have been forced to evacuate in California, faced with a violent mega-fire which continues to grow dangerously Friday, despite the intervention of 1,600 firefighters, and is causing concern among the authorities.
Since it broke out Wednesday afternoon in the north of the “Golden State”, the “Park Fire” has spread at breakneck speed: it has ravaged more than 720 km2 of wildfire and 134 buildings Friday, and was “0% contained,” according to CalFire.
The fire is moving at the speed of a man walking, in a rural area located three hours drive northeast of San Francisco.
The huge column of black smoke it generates is so vast that some experts compare it to the clouds typical of ultra-violent thunderstorms in the American West.
The flames forced 4,000 people to evacuate in the villages of Cohasset and Forest Ranch, and 400 people to flee the small town of Chico.
PHOTO DANIEL DREIFUSS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
The remains of a house destroyed by fire in the Forest Ranch area near Chico, California, on July 26
This huge forest fire brings back bad memories: the town of Paradise, where 85 people died in 2018 in the deadliest fire in California history, is now on alert and its residents must prepare for any eventuality.
“You have to be ready to go,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Thursday night. “If this fire spreads, I can’t promise or guarantee that we’ll be able to save your life.”
Criminal origin
In villages that had already been evacuated, some residents “had run out of petrol” in their cars, he criticised.
Some residents who escaped the flames described to local media their stressful escape, on the only accessible logging road in the area, where their headlights struggled to cut through the black smoke.
“It was definitely scary knowing that was the only way out,” Shelton told the newspaper. Sacramento Bee.
“I feel like I’m paralyzed. It’s surreal,” Julia Yarbough, whose home was destroyed by the fire, told CBS.
The fire was caused by arson, according to authorities. A 42-year-old man was remanded in custody Thursday morning after he was seen pushing a “burning car into a ravine,” according to local prosecutors.
The suspect was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2003. His criminal record includes sexual assault on a minor and armed robbery.
On the ground, reinforcements from multiple locations in California have been dispatched to fight the flames. A red alert has been issued by the weather service for Friday, due to strong winds that risk promoting the spread of the fire.
“We don’t anticipate a letup until mid-weekend,” Butte County Fire Chief Garrett Sjolund warned.
PHOTO DANIEL DREIFUSS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
CalFire firefighters prepare to build a firebreak along Highway 32 in Chico, California, on July 26.
“Extraordinary behavior”
“This is really the first fire in recent years in California that I would describe as extraordinary in its behavior, and that’s not a good thing,” Daniel Swain, an extreme events specialist at UCLA, said Thursday evening.
This expert compares this mega-fire to those which ravaged California during the 2010s, among the worst in the history of this western American state.
“The only good news is that there are no major cities in the immediate path of the fire,” he added, estimating that the fire could last “for weeks, if not months.”
After two rainy winters, the American West has suffered several heat waves since June, which is drying out the vegetation that has regrown and favoring the spread of flames.
“We broke records [de température] […] and this in a very large area, going from the northwest of Mexico to the west of Canada,” he insisted.
Dozens of fires are currently burning across the area, including in Oregon and Canada.
Repeated heat waves are a marker of global warming linked to climate change caused by humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, scientists say.