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TALENT, Oregon: Search and rescue teams, with dogs in tow, deployed to the blackened ruins of southern Oregon cities on Sunday (Sept. 13) as wildfires continue to ravage the western United States. authorities warn of massive casualties.
A wildfire barrage in Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and half a dozen small towns this summer, burning more than 4 million acres and killing more than two dozen people since the beginning of August.
Tracy Koa, a high school teacher, returned to Talent, Oregon, on Saturday after evacuating with her partner Dave Tanksley and their 13-year-old daughter to find their home and neighborhood reduced to piles of ash and debris.
“We knew he was gone,” Koa said in a telephone interview Sunday. “But then you stop, and the devastation of every home, you think of every family and every situation and every burned-out car, and there are just no words for that.”
Crews in Jackson County, Oregon, hoped to venture into rural areas where the Alameda fire has abated slightly with slower winds, sending thick plumes of smoke as embers burned. From Medford through the neighboring communities of Phoenix and Talent, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99.
Community donation centers popped up across Jackson County over the weekend, including one at the Home Depot parking lot in Phoenix, where farmers brought a truck box full of watermelons and people brought water and other supplies.
After four days of brutally hot and windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds that blew inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, wetter conditions that helped crews advance against flames that had raged out of control. At the beginning of the week.
Still, emergency officials were concerned that the changing weather wasn’t enough to put out the fires.
An open water diving class in West Seattle receives instructions from Jim Hackiewicz (R) as smoke from wildfires blankets the city of Seattle, Washington, on September 12, 2020 (Photo: REUTERS / Karen Ducey).
“We are concerned that the incoming front is not going to provide much rain here in the Medford region and it will bring more winds,” Bureau of Land Management spokesman Kyle Sullivan told Reuters in a telephone interview Sunday.
At least 10 people died in Oregon, according to the emergency management office. Brown has said dozens of people were still missing in three counties.
There were 34 active fires in Oregon as of Sunday morning, according to the website for the state emergency management office.
CLIMATE CHANGE ‘WAKE UP CALL’
Thick smoke and ash from the fires have darkened the skies over the Pacific Northwest since Labor Day, creating some of the worst air quality in the world and driving residents inland. Satellite images showed smoke floating inland heading east, the Bureau of Land Management said on Twitter on Sunday.
Drought conditions, extreme temperatures and high winds in Oregon created the “perfect firestorm” for flames to grow, Gov. Kate Brown told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
“This is a wake-up call to all of us that we have to do everything in our power to address climate change,” Brown said.
Commentary: America Needs a Government Without Drama and Disaster
Trump, a Republican, was scheduled to travel to California and meet with federal and state officials on Monday. He has said that western governors are partly to blame for the intense fire seasons in recent years, as opposed to rising temperatures, and has accused them of poor forest management.
In California, evacuations were ordered for the northern end of the San Gabriel Valley suburb of Arcadia as the Bobcat fire threatened communities.
A Washington State ferry pulls away from the pier as smoke from wildfires blankets the city of Seattle, Washington, on September 12, 2020 (Photo: REUTERS / Karen Ducey).
At Wilderness Park in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, firefighters prepared to avoid the blaze as it proceeded downhill.
The rugged terrain and dry hills that haven’t burned for 60 years are providing fuel for the blaze, which started over Labor Day weekend.
As smoke that has been obstructing the air and blocking the sun’s heat begins to rise, firefighters expect the weather to heat up and fire activity could increase, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
In all, in California, nearly 17,000 firefighters were fighting 29 major wildfires on Sunday, Cal Fire said.
However, improving weather conditions had helped them win a containment measure on the fires in many parts of the state, and some residents were allowed to evacuate in Madera County, near where the huge Creek fire was burning, they will return home.
More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been cremated in California alone in the past three weeks. About three million acres of land have been burned in the state, according to Cal Fire.
