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CREWS ARE BATTLING sprawling wildfires up and down the US West Coast in a wave of infernos that have killed 15 people and forced more than half a million others to flee their homes.
The true scale of destruction was hard to gauge across wide stretches of California, Oregon and Washington that were cut off by flames fuelled by record heat and intense, dry winds.
The August Complex Fire became the biggest recorded blaze in Californian history yesterday, after multiple fires in the state’s northwest combined under high temperatures and winds to rip through 746,000 acres of dry vegetation.
More than 2.6 million acres have been burned across the whole state so far, a Cal Fire spokesman said last night. And the state has not yet hit the peak of the fire season.
Half a million people have been evacuated in neighbouring Oregon to the north, where the government said firefighters were “prioritising life (and) safety as they battle a record 900,000 acres of wildfires”.
Governor Kate Brown said the area incinerated in just the last 72 hours was twice the state’s annual average, and that at least five towns had been “substantially destroyed”.
“We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state,” she told a press conference.
Huge wildfires are becoming more common, with the World Meteorological Organization saying the five years to 2019 was unprecedented for fires, especially in Europe and North America.
Climate change amplifies droughts which dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires to spread out-of-control and inflict unprecedented material and environmental damage.
‘Leave your house’
Oregon officials confirmed two deaths in the Santiam Canyon region south of Portland, and a third in the Ashland area, near the California border.
Police went door to door to make sure that residents were evacuating the city of Molalla, marking their driveways with spray paint to show they had left.
“It’s one thing to leave your house, it’s another thing being told that you have to leave,” said Denise Pentz, a resident of the town for 11 years, who was loading her family belongings into a camping trailer.
Among those killed was a one-year-old boy who perished while his parents suffered severe burns as they attempted to flee an inferno 130 miles east of Seattle.
“This child’s family and community will never be the same,” said Washington governor Jay Inslee, in a statement on his state’s first fire death of 2020.
‘Glowing red’
Police said the death toll stood at 10 in northern California’s Butte County as of yesterday evening.
In the fire-ravaged hillside hamlet of Berry Creek, county animal control officer Lynette Brennan said she had been through fires before in her eight years on the job and the hardest part is seeing people she knows lose their homes for good.
“It’s daunting. You see everything destroyed,” Brennan told the Los Angeles Times while waiting at a roadside for firefighters to take delivery of two injured dogs.
“You know they lost everything, and there is no recouping that,” Brennan said.
One unidentified person was killed in far northern California, near the remote rural community of Happy Camp, a Cal Fire spokeswoman told AFP.
Tina Rose, 29, fled her home in central California after witnessing a nearby mountain “glowing red” from looming wildfires.
“It is something we never want to experience again,” she told AFP, speaking from her brother-in-law’s crowded home near Fresno.
In the San Francisco area, Wednesday’s deep orange sky caused by wildfire smoke gave way to a wintry grey, but cars were still forced to drive with lights on in the gloom.
Polluted air meant schools and daycare centres were no longer letting children play outside, while seniors were encouraged to stay inside.
But the strong, dry winds of the past days eased off across much of the state, with severe weather warnings lifted for most of California.
Humidity is expected to rise as temperatures cool through to next week, providing some relief, Cal Fire said.
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Not a single empathetic, intelligent comment.
California gets a bad rap for wildfires, but there are also over thirty major wildfires in Oregon and Washington State right now.
Some reports from those areas suggest that these are being deliberately lit by members of Antifa, who are driving through wooded and overgrown areas, stopping to throw molotov cocktails out of their vehicles into the undergrowth.
The fires take hold, and next thing these sicko’s are reincarnated as environmental justice warriors and out in the media blaming the whole thing on climate change and global warming.
If it’s true, then these arsonists have actually caused more damage to the ozone layer in one summer than the people of Ireland have done in centuries, and that doesn’t take account of their responsibility for the people who have died.
@Garry Coll: Jaysis H Christ. I haven’t seen a take this bad since Caitlyn Jenner said Trump would help transgender rights.
You can mask it as ‘if this is true’ all you like. But thats directly from QAnon and they aren’t a source for sane people.
@David Duffy:
Wait and see David.
@David Duffy: there has actually been some people arrested for starting fires here in Oregon! I live just outside Portland & we have never had the fires this close, usually a natural fire is the result of lightning strikes, we haven’t had any of those!
@Garry Coll: ever hear of lightning?
@Garry Coll: A confirmed start of a fire was from a gender reveal party. The rest is speculation.
That said those fires a serious and people are suffering. Nobody is helped by spreading unconfirmed rumours.
@Garry Coll: it isn’t true, more social media lies, and has debunked.
@Garry Coll: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/wildfires-rage-false-antifa-rumors-spur-pleas-police-n1239881
@Garry Coll: LOL, itd take one of you Trumpster loons to come up wth this ‘antifa are starting the fires ‘ guff, it’s the 2020 equivalent of a Red Scare and 1950s McCarthyism. If anything it could be ranchers clearing scrub and we know in California it was some clowns at a ‘gender reveal’ party for an expectant couple.
@James Walsh:
Just a few points James, firstly your use of personalised invective does you no credit.
My comment was that such reports had been made in relation to Oregon and Washington, which is true and has been confirmed elsewhere. Your reference to the gender reveal party in California is just deflection.
All the sheriff’s offices have said is that no-one with an Antifa connection has been arrested, this may change. Yet this has been seized on by people to say that the entire assertion has been debunked, which is incorrect. Someone links this to a report from NBC. NBC pretended for months that the riots in Portland weren’t happening and have been cheerleaders for Antifa all summer, so they’re hardly objective.
If you’ve a link to the scrub clearing reason, I’d appreciate it.
@Garry Coll: so no proof either antifa, or as has been stated, proudboy involvement.
@DJ François:
I didn’t say there was DJ, and the main thrust of the comments by the sheriff’s departments was to ask people, presumably journalists, to stop ringing them so that their phone lines could be kept clear for other people with real emergencies.
But, to coin a phrase however inappropriate or in poor taste, thus could be one of those situations where there is genuinely no smoke without fire.
The end is nigh
Your optimism disgusts me. This will never end.
@KilkennyProud: probably not, but you’ll have polar bears making out with your cows in a short while
@BatMon: no, just a series of large changes, which if the reaction to covid is anything to go by, will seem the same.
@BatMon: OMG! What an imagination? Now I can’t get it out of my head. Thank you very much!
@BatMon: I bet their calves will be frrrrriesain !!!!!!!
@BatMon: No, there won’t be any polar bears outside of zoos before too long
Ya ya we know, wildfires in California blaa blaa
@Pat Andrews: That’s the spirit Pat
@Pat Andrews: biggest year on record post 2000 burned 310 000 acres. So far this year, 2.2m acres. But yeah, as you say. Bla bla bla
have your say