More than 20 people have been killed so far; hundreds of thousands have been displaced, half a million fleeing their homes in Oregon alone; and more than 17,000 firefighters have been deployed to battle blazes that have spread at never-before-seen rates
Photo: AFP via Getty Images Wildfires are currently scorching the West Coast at unprecedented levels. . As images proliferate across social media of cities plunged into an eerie orange darkness due to smoke cover, air quality is extremely unhealthy across the region, affecting millions. Food deliveries and other social services implemented during the pandemic have been canceled, though many people continue to work outside in dangerous conditions.
In Oregon, 36 active fires are burning more than 900,000 acres, according to the Oregon Office of Emergency Management. The Riverside fire in Clackamas County, near Portland, is expected to merge with another one of the state’s largest wildfires, the Beachie Creek Fire in Marion County. They have burned 300,000 acres at about zero percent containment.
Nineteen deaths have been reported in California. In Butte County alone, where the town of Paradise was destroyed by the Camp Fire in 2018, at least ten people have died and 16 are missing in the North Complex Fire. At least 20,000 people are under evacuation orders in Northern California. “The school is gone, the fire department’s gone, the bar’s gone, the laundromat’s gone, the general store’s gone,” one 50-year resident who fled the town of Berry Creek told the Sacramento Bee.
However, some of the fires, including the August Complex Fire, were caused by lightning strikes in extremely dry areas. Others in Oregon and California were started by downed power lines. Unusually strong winds in Oregon have helped spread the fires rapidly there. Oregon governor Kate Brown described the fires there as a “once-in-a-generation event” and potentially “the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfires in our state’s history.”
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