‘Extraordinary’ growth of California’s largest fire raises alarm

LOS ANGELES >> Around 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, as temperatures in Butte County hovered around 105 degrees Fahrenheit, a man pushed a burning car into a ravine in Chico. Authorities said it was arson.

Within minutes, the burning vehicle ignited tall grasses that had sprouted in the wake of a wet winter but had dried out in recent weeks. Soon, live oaks and grapevines were alight, and wind-blown embers shot through canyons and along the ridges of the Lassen Foothills, picking up new vegetation as they landed.

By evening, the fire in the park had grown to 6,000 acres, and by morning it had swelled sevenfold. Today, the fire was over 307,000 acres — the largest so far this year in California — with no containment and little sign of slowing.

Experts say the fire’s explosive growth is due to a perfect storm of hot, dry conditions, flammable vegetation and a landscape that hasn’t burned in decades. The remote terrain has made it difficult for crews to access the fire’s swelling perimeter, and the firefight could be long and arduous as they struggle to gain a foothold.

“This is really the first fire in recent years in California that I would call extraordinary — and that’s not good,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said in a briefing. “This fire is a big deal, and it’s done some pretty incredible things.”

Indeed, the fire and its massive smoke plume are already exhibiting rare and erratic behavior, including “supercell thunderstorm-like features” with large-scale rotations, Swain said. On Thursday, footage captured by AlertCalifornia wildfire cameras appeared to show the fire spewing tornado-like vortices, sometimes called fire whirls or firenados.

“At this point, the fire is creating its own weather, and it can be pretty unpredictable,” said Courtney Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Really large, explosive wildfires can produce thunderstorms; they can create swirling plumes that look like tornadoes.”

The Park Fire’s thunderstorms have not yet produced lightning, though Carpenter said that’s still possible given the “explosive fire growth” and extreme behavior. She noted that smoke from the fire has already reached Oregon.

Fortunately, the rapid spread of the fire has so far kept it north and eastward — across northern Butte County and a growing portion of Tehama County — into a relatively remote mix of grass, brush and timber and away from the threatened communities of Cohasset and Forest Ranch. But Swain said it will almost certainly swell to several times its current size, likely reaching several hundred thousand acres before it is contained.

“This is a fire that we’re going to have with us for weeks, if not months,” he said. “This may be one of those fires that starts in the middle of the summer and lasts into the middle of the fall … and could pose a bigger threat to communities later on.”

The fire has already left a trail of destruction. Chief Garrett Sjolund, of the Butte County division of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said “numerous structures” have been burned, including 134 destroyed buildings and another 4,000 threatened.

According to experts, the fire was burning within the city limits of Chico and has been on a mostly favorable course, driven by dry, southerly winds that have pushed the fire away from the city center.

But officials are concerned about the community of Cohasset, where they initially feared a repeat of the 2018 Camp Fire, which devastated the nearby community of Paradise and killed 85 people — the deadliest wildfire on record in California. That blaze left dozens of people trapped on the area’s restricted roads as they tried to escape.

“Cohasset was a particular concern to us because … there’s really only one way out and it’s a narrow, windy road,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. “It’s tough to get through, so we wanted to get those warnings out as quickly as possible.”

About 4,000 residents have been evacuated from Cohasset, Forest Ranch and parts of northeastern Chico, as well as several rural areas in southern Tehama County.

While the dry winds that fuel fires in this area typically come from the north, they came less often from the south this week, sucking up all the moisture they normally carry, said Carpenter, a meteorologist with the weather service.

“The last month has been very dry – and hot – and that’s why we’re seeing those critical fire conditions,” she said.

A red flag warning was in effect for the area, indicating dangerous weather that could promote rapid fire growth on both Thursday and Friday.

That pattern has caused flames to ignite in wilderness areas that have been untouched by fire for decades, if not longer. This has caused vegetation to thicken and create dead and dying branches that can easily and quickly catch fire.

“There are tremendous amounts of live and dead fuels,” said Dan Collins, a spokesman for Cal Fire’s Butte Unit, adding that the Ishi Wilderness area and some parts of Cohasset have “little to no fire history” on their records.

The region’s rugged landscape complicates firefighting, with steep cliffs, vast canyons and few roads through the national forest.

“That’s one of the biggest challenges is getting people to the fire line, because of the remoteness of the area,” Collins said.

The blaze isn’t the only wildfire in the West that’s causing concern. Cal Fire is battling more than 20 active fires in the state, while in Canada, crews are battling a 220,000-acre blaze in Alberta that has already destroyed parts of the historic resort town of Jasper. Experts say many of the fires have been fueled by the ongoing, record-breaking heat wave that has ravaged the West for weeks.

Residents of the Chico area are watching with bated breath as the Park Fire develops.

“It’s been a pretty turbulent time for us,” said Don Hankins, a professor of geography and planning at Cal State Chico and a member of the Butte County Fire Safe Council.

The Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve, where he does much of his research, has already burned down, with cameras indicating that nearly all of the infrastructure has been lost, including a barn from the 1870s, Hankins said.

While the fire shares some similarities with the Camp Fire, the community of Cohasset has been preparing for a potential fire in recent years, Hankins said, including implementing fuel reduction projects and conducting prescribed burns to clear some of the flammable material between the city and the wilderness.

“But unfortunately, given the winds and the scale of these projects, it’s not necessarily enough to make a difference” if the fire continues to rage out of control, he said.

More fires are likely to be fought in the coming days and weeks as firefighters deal with a rugged, volcanic landscape and continued hot and dry conditions.

“The outlook is that it’s not going to be easy to control,” Hankins said. “We’ve got a long season ahead of us before the rainy season starts, and that’s really the ultimate tool to contain all of these fires that are happening in the West right now.”

Sjolund, the Butte County fire chief, said he hopes the expected drop in temperatures and increase in humidity this weekend can help fight the Park fire — and other fires in the region.

“It’s kind of a moving target with the way the weather patterns are coming in,” he said. “This fire is moving very fast and very quickly.”

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This Los Angeles Times article was distributed by Tribune Content Agency.