California’s largest wildfire explodes in size as fires rage across western US

California’s largest active fire broke out Friday night and quickly spread through bone-dry fuel, threatening thousands of homes as firefighters raced to battle the danger.

The Park Fire’s intensity and dramatic scale led firefighters to draw uneasy comparisons to the massive Camp Fire, which raged out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and burning down 11,000 homes.

More than 130 buildings have been destroyed by the fire so far, and thousands more are threatened as evacuations have been ordered in four counties — Butte, Plumas, Tehama and Shasta. The fire was 374 square miles (967 square kilometers) in size as of Friday evening and was moving quickly north and east after igniting Wednesday when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a ravine in Chico and then calmly mingled with others fleeing the scene.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fuel out there and it’s going to continue at this rapid pace,” Cal Fire incident commander Billy See said during a briefing. He said the fire was advancing at a rate of up to 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) per hour Friday afternoon.

Lassen Volcanic National Park officials evacuated personnel from Mineral, a community of about 120 people that houses the park’s headquarters, as the fire moved north toward Highway 36 and east toward the park.

Communities elsewhere in the western U.S. and Canada were under siege Friday. A rapidly spreading fire sparked by lightning sent people fleeing along fire-lined roads in rural Idaho. Another fire also prompted evacuations in eastern Washington.

In eastern Oregon, a pilot was found dead in a small tanker plane that crashed while battling one of the many wildfires spreading across several western states.

More than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) were burning across the U.S. as of Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were caused by weather, as climate change increases the frequency of lightning strikes while the region continues to experience record heat and bone-dry conditions.

The fire in eastern Washington threatened homes, the railroad tracks, Interstate 90 and the community of Tyler, which was evacuated Friday. The Columbia Basin fire in Spokane County closed a section of Highway 904 between the interstate and Cheney. Multiple planes, helicopters and firefighters worked to contain the blaze, the Washington State Patrol said.

In Chico, California, Carli Parker is one of hundreds who fled their homes as the Park Fire closed in. Parker decided to leave her Forest Ranch home with her family when the fire started burning across the street. She has been forced from two homes before by fires and said she had little hope that hers would remain intact.

“I think I felt like I was in danger because the police had come to our house because we had put in an early evacuation warning, and they ran to their car after telling us to evacuate ourselves and they weren’t coming back,” said Parker, a mother of five.

Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested Thursday morning in connection with the fire and was being held without bail pending a Monday arraignment, officials said. There was no response to an email to the district attorney’s office asking if the suspect had legal representation or anyone who could comment on his behalf.

Firefighters made progress on another complex of fires in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada border, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman said. Most of the 1,000 residents evacuated by the lightning-sparked Gold Complex fires returned home Friday. Some crews went out to help fight the Park Fire.

“As evidenced by the (Park) fire out west, some of these fires just explode and burn at a rate that is hard to imagine,” said Tim Hike, Forest Service incident commander for the Gold Complex fire about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Reno, Friday. “The fire doesn’t look that bad until it does. And then it may be too late.”

Sherry Alpers, an evacuee from Forest Ranch, fled with her 12 small dogs and decided to stay in her car outside a Red Cross shelter in Chico after learning that animals were not allowed inside. She decided not to travel to another shelter after learning that the dogs would be kept in cages, since her dogs had always been free-roaming in her home.

Alpers says she doesn’t know if the fire spared her home, but she says as long as her dogs are safe, material things don’t interest her.

“I’m a little worried, but not that much,” she said. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Brian Bowles was also in his car outside the shelter with his dog Diamon. He said he doesn’t know if his mobile home is still there.

Bowles said he only has a $100 gift card he received from the United Way, which distributed the gift cards to the evacuees.

“The question now is, do I get a motel room and be comfortable for one night? Or do I put gas in the car and sleep here?” he said. “Tough choice.”

In Oregon, a Grant County Search and Rescue team found a small, single-engine tanker Friday morning that had disappeared while battling the 219-square-mile (567-square-kilometer) Falls Fire near the town of Seneca and the Malheur National Forest. The pilot was killed, said Lisa Clark, public information officer for the Bureau of Land Management. No one else was aboard the agency-contracted plane when it crashed in steep, wooded terrain.

The most damage so far has been inflicted on Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies, where a rapidly spreading wildfire has forced 25,000 people to flee and destroyed the park’s namesake town, which is a World Heritage site.

In Idaho, lightning strikes sparked fast-moving wildfires and forced the evacuation of several communities. The fires burned across about 31 square miles (80 square kilometers) Friday afternoon.

Videos posted to social media showed a man saying he heard explosions as he fled Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southeast of the University of Idaho’s Moscow campus. The town of just over 600 people was evacuated Thursday ahead of the roaring fires, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery Complex, where salmon are farmed.

As of Friday morning, officials said there was no estimate yet on the number of buildings burned in Idaho, nor was there any information on damage to urban communities.

Oregon still has the largest active fire in the United States, the Durkee Fire, which together with the Cow Fire has burned nearly 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers). The blaze remains unpredictable and was only 20% contained on Friday, according to the government website InciWeb.

More than 27,000 fires have burned more than 6,000 square miles in the U.S. this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In Canada, more than 8,000 square miles have been burned by more than 3,700 fires so far, according to the National Wildland Fire Situation Report released Wednesday.

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Associated Press writers Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Terry Chea, Scott Sonner, Martha Bellisle and Amy Hanson contributed to this report.