California wildfires spread and mass evacuation ordered as home explodes in park fire

A wildfire has started to rage across California forcing terrified residents to evacuate and a house to blow up amid the blaze.

The fire is spreading across Butte County in Northern California. One worried local wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Scary night here in far Northern California. The #Park fire is headed for the north edge of town."

An evacuation order has been issued for an area covering Chico Regional Airport.

Chief Meteorologist & Chief Climate Correspondent at ABC News Ginger Zee, who is at the scene, shared a video showing a home explode as the fire spread. v

Terrifying footage from the scene shows the sky filled with smoke and lit up read from the fires. One video was posted with the caption: "last video I got from my husband.. god please protect him"

According to emergency monitor Cal Fire, ‎6465 acres of woodland have already burned and the fire is only three per cent contained. Maps show just how close the blaze has got to the town of Chico, which has a population of around 100,000.

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According to fire watchers, fire is burning north toward Richardson Springs driven by winds. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. It is believed to have broken out at around 2.52pm on July 24.

The fire erupted near Upper Bidwell Park in Chico on Wednesday afternoon, quickly scorching approximately 1,500 acres and triggering evacuation orders, officials reported.

Cal Fire's Butte Unit spokesperson Rick Carhart announced that they are collaborating with the Chico Fire Department to combat the fire, which is situated in a "multi-agency threat zone."

Although Bidwell Park lies within the city limits of Chico, the blaze also poses a risk to areas under Cal Fire's protection.

Evacuation warnings were issued by the Butte County Sheriff's Office at 4.45 pm for zones 317 and 318, encompassing sparsely populated areas to the north and northwest of Bidwell Park. These warnings escalated to mandatory evacuation orders within half an hour, as stated on the Sheriff's Office social media channels.

The affected regions stretch from west of Musty Buck Ridge, down south to Thorntree Drive, and up north to Cohasset Road, detailed on the county's evacuation map.

This comes as other massive wildfires rage across the US. Powerful winds and hundreds of lightning strikes from thunderstorms rattled eastern Oregon and Idaho Wednesday afternoon, cutting power and stoking fires, including one in Oregon that is already the largest active blaze in the nation.

The Durkee Fire, burning near the Oregon-Idaho border about 130 miles (209 kilometers) west of Boise, Idaho, caused the closure of a stretch of Interstate 84 again Wednesday. Amid rapidly forming storms in the afternoon, the blaze crossed the interstate near the town of Huntington, home to about 500 people. It also merged with the Cow Valley Fire, another large blaze that had been burning nearby, Gov. Tina Kotek said.

“The wildfires in Eastern Oregon have scaled up quickly,” Kotek said in a news release Wednesday evening, calling it a dynamic situation. “We are facing strong erratic winds over the region that could impact all fires. Rain is not getting through. Some communities do not have power.”