Fueled by high winds and dry conditions, fires in Oregon, California and Washington state have destroyed homes and forced last-minute evacuations of thousands of residents amid the coronavirus pandemic.
At least 85 large, uncontained fires were burning in Western states on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 3 million acres in California have burned so far, according to the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, a record for an entire year. Six of the top 20 largest fires in state history have occurred in 2020.
Oregon has never seen so many uncontained fires at once, Gov. Kate Brown wrote on Twitter. More than 900,000 acres have burned already, compared with an average of 500,000 a year for the past decade.
“I want to be upfront in saying that we expect to see a great deal of loss, both in structures and human lives,” said Ms. Brown, a Democrat, at a news conference Thursday. “This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state’s history.”
At least 12 people have died in wildfires in California and three more in Washington and Oregon. An additional 12 people were missing Thursday near the Bear Fire in Northern California, according to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.
Adding to the apocalyptic feeling, skies were hazy and air quality was dangerously poor across the West Coast as smoke spread over the region. In the San Francisco Bay Area, an orange haze that blocked much of the sunlight on Wednesday began to lift on Thursday.
San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Seattle had the three worst air-quality indexes in the world on Friday, according to the website IQAir, ahead of fourth-place Delhi, India.
The region has been struggling since mid-August, when a series of lightning storms set off major blazes, some of which were still burning on Friday. Other fires were caused by human activity, including explosives set off at a party outside Los Angeles. Record temperatures and strong winds have helped the fires to spread quickly, while forests full of hundreds of millions of trees dried out by climate change and beetle infestations have proven to be perfect fuel.
“The overall totality of what we are seeing now—there are so many extremely large fires—is outside of the experience of anyone I have talked to,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Across Oregon this week, about 500,000 residents were evacuated as fires destroyed hundreds of homes, according to the state officials. In addition to southern communities in the state, towns in Marion County and Lane County “are substantially destroyed,” said Ms. Brown. A child was found dead in a car with his dog, according to Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast.
The fast-moving Almeda Drive Fire in Oregon, affecting southern communities like Ashland and Medford, has burned through more than 5,700 acres, according to the state’s Office of Emergency Management. Images of the fire’s destruction shared by the agency showed burnt-through neighborhoods and smoldering lots.
In Washington, a 1-year-old child died in the Cold Springs Fire in Okanogan County, according to Gov. Jay Inslee. The child’s parents were also hospitalized. The Cold Springs Fire has consumed at least 174,000 acres and more than 580,000 acres have burned throughout the state, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.