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. 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.
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. You can find our list of ways to help people affected here. Even the environmentalists, scientists, and policy-makers who have been sounding the alarm about the threat of the climate crisis for years are stunned by this year’s fire season. “We used to worry about one natural hazard at a time,” Alice Hill, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the New York Times. “The acceleration of climate impacts has happened faster than even we anticipated.” Where are the fires burning on the West Coast? How many are there? Oregon, Washington, and California are enduring the largest fires, but wildfires are also burning in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. As of September 11, there were 28 major wildfires burning across California, according to CalFire. So far this year, 3.1 million acres have burned, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. The August Complex Fire in Northern California, in the Mendocino National Forest, is now the largest on record in history; it accelerated significantly after several smaller fires merged. The other largest fires include the SCU Lightning Complex outside the Bay Area; the LNU Lightning Complex in Napa and Sonoma Counties; the North Complex near Oroville; and the Creek Fire near Fresno. 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. Because the fires are burning near the state’s most populated areas, they have the potential to do more damage to personal property and to cause more loss of life than any fire in the state’s history, says Governor Kate Brown. Dozens of fires are burning in Washington State on both sides of the Cascade mountains, scorching 480,000 acres already. Officials are bracing for a “supermassive” smoke plume in Seattle, caused by fires burning in the south of the state and traveling north. How many people have been displaced? How many have died? In Oregon, 500,000 people have been displaced as of September 10. That amounts to 10 percent of the state’s population, according to officials. USA Today reports that as of September 11, three people have been killed in Oregon, including a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother. 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. “I’ll never go back … I never want to see California again.” A 1-year-old boy was killed in the Cold Springs Fire in northern Washington when his parents were trapped fleeing their campsite. Thousands have been evacuated and hundreds of buildings have been lost, including almost the entire town of Malden, Washington. What started the fires? Many fires have started because of human causes, including most of the fires in California. The El Dorado Fire in Southern California’s San Bernardino County was started on September 5 by a pyrotechnic device at a gender-reveal party in El Dorado Ranch Park, just 80 miles outside Los Angeles. In Oregon, officials have opened an arson investigation into the Alameda Fire, which is responsible for two deaths and has destroyed hundreds of homes. 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. Multiple far-right and conspiracy websites have been spreading misinformation about the origin of the fires, on Facebook and YouTube especially: They claim, with absolutely no support, that they were set by members of antifa and Black Lives Matter. Websites the Gateway Pundit and the Post Millennial have claimed without evidence that Jeff Acord, a 36-year-old man arrested on charges of starting a fire in Washington, was an “antifa militant.” Many of the rumors have been amplified by self-professed QAnon supporters. How unprecedented are fires in California and elsewhere? According to CalFire, six of California’s ten largest fires in history are currently burning right now. Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted statistics that show how much worse the fires are even compared with 2019’s: Last year, 4,927 fires burned 118K acres. So far this year alone, 7,606 fires have burned 2.3 million acres. 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.” “We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state,” she tweeted. “If you’re advised to evacuate, do so immediately. You may not get a second chance.” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, told the New York Times, “I’ve spoken to maybe two dozen fire and climate experts over the last 48 hours and pretty much everyone is at a loss of words. There’s certainly been nothing in living memory on this scale.” What is the role of the climate crisis in more destructive fire seasons? Scientists agree that these fires are a product of the cascade effect of multiple runaway climate extremes that trigger and amplify one another: An unusually dry season combined with record heat and strong winds has created conditions for infernos that are nearly impossible to contain. “You’re toppling dominoes in ways that Americans haven’t imagined,” Roy Wright, a former FEMA director, told the New York Times. “It’s apocalyptic.” What’s more, the fires are spawning their own environmental hazards, including toxic air and chemicals leaching into water supplies.
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