Thousands of firefighters battling an intense wildfire in Northern California received some help from the weather hours after it exploded in size- scorching an area greater than the size of Los Angeles.
The fire was one of several tearing through the western United States and Canada, fueled by wind and heat. Cooler temperatures and an increase in humidity could help slow the Park Fire, the largest this year in California. Its intensity and dramatic spread led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes.
Paradise again was near the danger zone on Saturday. The entire town was under an evacuation warning, one of several communities in Butte County. Evacuation orders were also issued in Plumas, Tehama and Shasta counties. An evacuation warning calls for people to prepare to leave and await instructions, while an evacuation order means to leave immediately.
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Temperatures are expected to be cooler than average through the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean that fires that are existing will go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
As of Saturday night, the Park Fire had scorched 547 square miles (1,416 square kilometers) and destroyed 134 structures since igniting Wednesday, when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. It was 10% contained and moving to the north and east near Chico.
The fire is larger than the city of Los Angeles, which covers about 469 square miles (1,214 square kilometers), and now ranks seventh on the list of the state’s top 10 largest wildfires by acreage, Cal Fire said in a social media post. Nearly 2,500 firefighters were battling the blaze, aided by 16 helicopters and numerous air tankers.
Jeremy Pierce, a Cal Fire operations section chief, said firefighters were taking advantage of the cooler weather while it lasts: “We’re having great success today.”
Susan Singleton and her husband packed their SUV with clothes, some food and their seven dogs and rushed to evacuate their home this week in Cohasset, a town of about 400 northeast of Chico. They have since learned that their house burned down.
“Everything else we had burned up, but getting them out, getting us out, was my priority,” Singleton said Saturday, standing outside her SUV as her dogs rested. They have all been sleeping in the car outside a Red Cross shelter at a church that does not allow animals, and Singleton, 59, said the next thing is to find a place for her pets to stretch out.
“We’ve got to have a place to land and stop doing this, because this is what’s stressing me out,” she said.
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