Dozens of extreme wind-driven wildfires burned through forests and towns in U.S. West Coast states on Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes, killing at least seven people, authorities said.
Houses and vehicles in the Bear Lakes Estates neighborhood which were left devastated by the Almeda fire are seen in Phoenix, Oregon, U.S., September 9, 2020. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Adrees Latif In the past 48 hours, three people died from a lightning-sparked fire in northern California, while three were reported dead in Oregon and a 1-year-old boy died in Washington state, police reported.
Hundreds of thousands have evacuated their homes in the three states. Oregon bore the brunt of nearly 100 major wildfires ripping across the western states, with around 3,000 firefighters battling nearly three dozen wildfires. The blazes tore through at least five communities in Oregon’s Cascade mountain range as well as areas of coastal rainforest normally spared from wildfires. East of Salem, Oregon, search and rescue teams entered destroyed communities like Detroit where firefighters led residents on a dramatic mountain escape after military helicopters were unable to evacuate the town. A 12-year-old boy was found dead with his dog inside a burned car and his grandmother was believed to be dead after flames engulfed an area near Lyons, Oregon, about 50 miles south of Portland, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said. To the south, most of the city of Medford, population 82,000 residents, was told to evacuate or prepare to evacuate as fires burned around the city. A Reuters photographer saw nearby small communities including Bear Lake Estates reduced to ashes as he drove south on Interstate 5 towards Ashland. Some people counted their blessings after fleeing the Bear Creek trailer park, where nearly every home burned. Fire moved north up the highway, wiping out whole subdivisions where embers touched down. “Thank God we were at home,” said Julio Flores, a resident of the community who escaped with two children who would have been alone had his restaurant working hours not been cut due to the coronavirus pandemic. A fire was suspected of causing at least one death outside of Ashland, said Rich Tyler, spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal. “When it really gets windy these embers are going for miles,” said Firefighter Andy Cardinal in Eagle Point, north of Medford where the town of around 10,000 was prepared to evacuate. Oregon Governor Kate Brown on Wednesday said the state was facing perhaps its greatest ever loss in lives from wildfires, with the communities of Blue River and Vida in Lane County and Phoenix and Talent in southern Oregon largely destroyed. The fires have caused power outages up and down the west coast, with about 60,000 homes and businesses in Oregon without electricity on Thursday, according to local utilities. Portland General Electric PGE.N in a statement Tuesday said it was receiving unconfirmed reports that some fires in the region may have been started by electrical equipment affected by heavy winds and debris. A spokeswoman had no further comment on Thursday. Climate scientists say global warming has contributed to greater extremes in wet and dry seasons across the U.S. West, causing vegetation to flourish then dry out, leaving more abundant, volatile fuel for firesIn California, officials said some 64,000 people were under evacuation orders on Wednesday while crews battled 28 major fires across portions of the most populous U.S. state. About a third of those evacuees were displaced in Butte County alone, north of the capital Sacramento, where a wildfire has scorched more than 200,000 acres since it was ignited on Aug. 17. Almost half of that landscape was consumed since Tuesday, as a newly ferocious flank of that blaze dubbed the Bear Fire spread largely unchecked over some 97,000 acres . The remains of three victims were found in two separate locations of that fire zone, according to Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, bringing the total death toll from this summer’s devastating spate of California wildfires to at least 11.The Bear Fire raged near the outskirts of Paradise, a town largely reduced to ash in 2018, with 85 lives lost, in a firestorm that still ranks as the deadliest in California history. In eastern Washington, a man and a woman were in critical condition with burns after their 1-year-old son died as they tried to escape the state’s largest wildfire burning in mountains about 100 miles northwest of Spokane, the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Earlier in the week around 80% of homes and buildings were destroyed in Malden, a town around 30 miles south of Spokane, by another blaze, according to a statement by the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office. Reporting by Andrew Hay, additional reporting by Carlos Barria, Adrees Latif and Scott Disavino; editing by Diane Craft, Bill Berkrot and Tom Brown
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