California's largest wildfire explodes in size as fires rage across US West

Thousands of firefighters were battling a wildfire in northern California on Saturday that exploded in size, scorching an area about the size of Los Angeles — one of several blazes tearing through the western United States and Canada amid dry, hot and windy conditions.

The forecast called for cooler temperatures that could help slow the Park Fire, the largest blaze so far this year in California. The Park Fire’s intensity and dramatic spread led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes.

And Paradise again was near the danger zone. The entire town was under an evacuation warning Saturday, one of several communities in Butte County. Evacuation orders were also issued for Plumas, Tehama and Shasta counties. An evacuation warning calls for people to prepare to evacuate and await instructions. An evacuation order means to leave immediately.

More than 130 structures have been destroyed by the Park Fire so far as the inferno barreled through steep mountainous terrain — creating tough conditions overnight for crews.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fuel out there and it’s going to continue with this rapid pace,” Cal Fire incident commander Billy See said at a briefing. He said the fire was advancing up to 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) an hour on Friday afternoon.

The fire stood at 480 square miles (1,243 square kilometers) on Friday night — just shy of the size of the city of Los Angeles, which covers roughly 503 square miles (1,302 square kilometers). The blaze was moving quickly north and east after igniting Wednesday, when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then calmly blended in with others fleeing the scene.

Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested early Thursday in connection with the blaze and held without bail pending a Monday arraignment, officials said. There was no reply to an email to the district attorney asking whether the suspect had legal representation or someone who could comment on his behalf.

Amanda Brown, who lives in the community where Stout was arrested, said she was stunned that someone might set a fire in a region where the memories of the devastation in Paradise are still fresh.

“That anyone could deliberately put our community through that again is incredibly cruel. I don’t understand it,” said the 61-year-old Brown, who is about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the fire but had not been ordered to evacuate.

Communities elsewhere in the U.S. West and Canada also were under siege Saturday from a fast-moving blaze sparked by lightning that sent people fleeing on fire-ringed roads in rural Idaho to a new blaze that was causing evacuations in eastern Washington.

In eastern Oregon, a pilot was found dead in a small air tanker plane that crashed while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several Western states.

More than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) were burning in the U.S. on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were caused by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region endures record heat and bone-dry conditions.

A fire in eastern Washington destroyed three homes and five outbuildings near the community of Tyler, which was evacuated Friday afternoon, said Ryan Rodruck, spokesperson with the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

In Chico, California, Carli Parker is one of hundreds who fled their homes as the Park Fire pushed close. Parker decided to leave her Forest Ranch residence with her family when the fire began burning across the street. She has previously been forced out of two homes by fire, and she said she had little hope that her residence would remain unscathed.

“I think I felt like I was in danger because the police had come to our house because we had signed up for early evacuation warnings, and they were running to their vehicle after telling us that we need to self-evacuate and they wouldn’t come back,” said Parker, a mother of five.

Elsewhere, fire crews were making progress on another complex of fires burning in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada line, said Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman. Most of the 1,000 residents evacuated by the lightning-sparked Gold Complex fires were returning home Friday. Some crews were peeling off to help battle the Park Fire.

“As evidenced by the (Park) fire to the West, some of these fires are just absolutely exploding and burning at rates of spread that it is just hard to even imagine,” Tim Hike, Forest Service incident commander of the Gold Complex fire about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Reno, said Friday.

Forest Ranch evacuee Sherry Alpers, fled with her 12 small dogs and made the decision to stay in her car outside a Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning that animals would not be allowed inside. She ruled out traveling to another shelter after learning the dogs would be kept in cages, since her dogs have always roamed free at her home.

Alpers said she doesn’t know whether the fire spared her home or not, but she said that as long as her dogs are safe, she doesn't care about the material things.

“I’m kind of worried, but not that much," she said. “If it’s gone, it’s gone.”

The most damage so far has been to the Canadian Rockies’ Jasper National Park, where a fast-moving wildfire forced 25,000 people to flee and devastated the park’s namesake town, a World Heritage site.

Oregon still has the biggest active blaze in the United States, the Durkee Fire, which combined with the Cow Fire to burn nearly 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers). It remains unpredictable and was only 20% contained Friday, according to the government website InciWeb. In Oregon, a pilot died after his single-engine air tanker went down in forested terrain while fighting the Falls Fire near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest.

In Idaho, lightning strikes sparked fast-moving wildfires and the evacuation of multiple communities. The fires were burning on about 31 square miles (80 square kilometers) Friday afternoon.

Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southeast of the University of Idaho’s campus in Moscow, was evacuated Thursday just ahead of roaring fires, as were several other communities.

The National Interagency Fire Center said more than 27,000 fires have burned more than 5,800 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) in the U.S. this year, and in Canada, more than 8,000 square miles (22,800 square kilometers) have burned in more than 3,700 fires so far, according to its National Wildland Fire Situation Report issued Wednesday.

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Associated Press writers Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Terry Chea, Scott Sonner, Martha Bellisle and Amy Hanson contributed to this report.