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Several people have died in wildfires in the US, where tens of thousands have been told to flee their homes as firefighters fight dozens of major fires across much of California and the neighboring state of Oregon.
There, its governor, Kate Brown, has said that hundreds of homes have been destroyed and that the devastation could become overwhelming.
“This could be the largest loss of human life and property due to wildfire in the history of our state, “the Oregon Governor told reporters, calling the fires” unprecedented. “
Wildfires blanket San Francisco in darkness and an orange glow
Three prisons were also evacuated Tuesday night.
Firefighters were struggling to try to contain the flames and officials in some places were giving residents just minutes to evacuate their homes.
“It was like driving through hell,” Jody Evans told local television station NewsChannel21 after a midnight evacuation from Detroit, about 50 miles (80 km) west of Salem, the Oregon capital.
The fires trapped firefighters and some residents and swept through an entire small town in eastern Washington.
Winds of up to 75 mph helped stoke dozens of fires in Washington state and Oregon that rarely experience such intense fires due to the cool, humid climate of the Pacific Northwest.
Sheriff’s deputies, who traveled with chainsaws on their patrol cars to cut down fallen trees blocking roads, went door-to-door in rural communities 40 miles south of Portland, asking people to leave.
The remains of a house burn in Butte County, California
Vegetation on fire near Lake Oroville as wildfires ravage California
Since Tuesday, some 16,000 people have been told to leave their homes.
“These winds are so incredible and they are spreading so fast that we don’t have much time,” said Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.
Crews clear brush on the path of a fire near Lake Oroville, California
In Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee said more than 330,000 acres (133,546 hectares) were burned in a 24-hour period.
A 12-year-old boy and his grandmother were killed in a wildfire near the Lyons community in Santiam Valley, about 50 miles south of Portland, according to KOIN News.
More than two million acres have burned this year
The fire was also suspected of causing at least one death outside of Ashland, said Rich Tyler, a spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal.
A one-year-old boy was also killed and his parents were severely burned while fleeing a fire in Okanogan County, Washington, police said.
A satellite image shows destroyed homes at Mountain View Estates in Talent, Oregon
Hundreds of miles away in Northern California, the remains of three people were found in two separate locations, according to Sheriff Kory Honea, bringing the total death toll from this summer’s series of wildfires in the been to at least 11.
One of the victims was found in a car, apparently trying to flee the fires, California Highway Patrol Officer Ben Draper told reporters.
Some 64,000 people were told to leave their properties while crews tackled 28 major fires there.
About a third of those evacuees were displaced in Butte County just north of Sacramento, where a wildfire has ravaged more than 200,000 acres since it started last month.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of homes and other buildings are believed to have been damaged or destroyed by the fire northeast of San Francisco, firefighters said.
The blaze has also threatened Paradise, a city devastated just two years ago by the deadliest blaze in state history that caused a traffic jam as panicked residents tried to escape.
Thick smoke drowned out much of the state and cast an eerie shade of orange into the sky Wednesday.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, conservatively estimated that the fire had burned about 400 square miles in 24 hours.
“The incredible rates of spread now being seen in these fires are historically unprecedented,” he tweeted.
The US Forest Service, which had taken the unprecedented step of closing eight national forests in Southern California earlier in the week, ordered the closure of all 18 state forests for public safety reasons.
California has set a record with nearly 2.5 million acres It’s already burned this year, and historically the worst of the wildfire season doesn’t begin until the fall.
