[ad_1]
The annual fire season is far from over, but wildfires on the west coast of the United States have already reached devastating proportions. At least 33 people have died and many more are still missing.
The death toll from wildfires and brush fires in the western United States has continued to rise. So far, authorities have reported 33 deaths: 22 people died in California, 10 in Oregon and one in Washington.
In the three states along the coast, many people are still missing, causing local authorities to fear more deaths. Andrew Phelps, a Civil Protection official, said Oregon is bracing for a massive death toll “based on what we know and the number of structures destroyed.”
For weeks, California in particular has been ravaged by violent fires. Last week, the fires also hit Oregon and parts of Washington with unusual severity. Wildfires also burn in Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado or Idaho, according to the federal agency’s National Interagency Fire Center.
Harmful smog in many cities
Many people in the affected areas are left with nothing, and some settlements are left with only charred rubble. Millions more Americans suffer from the smoke that spreads along the Pacific coast.
Several cities in the states of California, Oregon and Washington are still cut off from the outside world by gigantic walls of fire. Tens of thousands of people have already had to leave their homes, hundreds of thousands are instructed to prepare for an evacuation.
In many cities, air quality has reached a level that is detrimental to health. The city of Portland had the worst air quality ever recorded by the Oregon Environmental Protection Agency in 1985. In Salem, the local air quality index was 512, on a scale that generally only goes from 0 to 500. Environmental agencies Oregon had labeled air quality at a dozen monitoring stations across the state as “dangerous” or “very unhealthy,” the worst two of six warning levels. For the metropolises of Portland, Vancouver in Canada and Seattle in Washington state, the IQAir website reported Sunday on the most serious air pollution in 96 cities on record worldwide.
Hope for relaxation
Tens of thousands of firefighters are currently working on wildfires and the situation has stabilized somewhat in some places. In Oregon, evacuation warning levels were relaxed in some areas. There and in California, authorities expected a relaxation through favorable winds, possible rains and lower temperatures.
This year’s fire season will last at least seven weeks, “USA Today” wrote. So the fire department called on people on the West Coast to remain vigilant: “Don’t be fooled by colder temperatures,” quoted the David Berlant newspaper of the Cal Fire authority in California. “Historically, September and October have the largest and most devastating wildfires.”
Six of the current fires are already among the 20 largest in California history since records began in 1930. The fires have now destroyed an area the size of Sardinia.
Trump visits California on Monday
US President Donald Trump wants to be personally briefed on the California wildfires for the first time on Monday. Trump will visit McClellan Park, a settlement north of Sacramento in the center of the state, confirmed spokesman Judd Deere. He will participate in a meeting with regional and federal forces.
The democratic governors of all three states blamed climate change for the unusually strong fires. “This is a wake-up call that we have to do everything we can to fight climate change,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said on CBS.
Wildfires and scrub fires have risen sharply in recent years, leading experts to believe that global warming is partly responsible. “The science is clear and deadly signs like this are unmistakable: Climate change is an imminent existential threat to the way we live,” said Trump’s Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden. Trump could try “to deny this reality, but the facts are undeniable.”
