California’s largest wildfire of year whips through community of Forest Ranch: ‘The sky was dark with smoke’

A massive and explosive wildfire whipped through the small rural community of Forest Ranch, California, on Thursday, bringing back dark memories in a region that has withstood several devastating wildfires in recent years.

The Park fire has grown into the state’s largest this year, destroying buildings and forcing the evacuations of thousands in one of the state’s most wildfire-hardened regions.

The blaze started on Wednesday on the outskirts of Chico, a tree-lined university town of about 110,000 people in the Sacramento Valley. By Friday morning, the blaze had burned more than 178,000 acres (72,034 hectares) across Butte and Tehama counties. Fueled by steady winds and hot weather, the flames have been particularly ferocious, licking above the tree line as the fire ballooned in size.

By Friday evening, the blaze had burned 239,000 acres and spread into Plumas and Shasta counties, CBS News reported. One official told CBS the fire was spreading at a rapid rate of 4,000 to 5,000 acres an hour.

Initially worried the flames would burst into the town of Chico, firefighting crews by Thursday were concentrating their efforts on Forest Ranch, a rural settlement of about 1,700 people roughly 15 miles away. All residents of Forest Ranch have been ordered to evacuate due to the “extreme danger of being overtaken by fire”, authorities said.

Residents described a harrowing escape. “The ride out was really hard,” said Anasuya Basil, a 63-year-old resident of Forest Ranch. “The road out is very narrow and windy and bumpy.”

She added that the “sky was dark with smoke”, but luckily, nothing around her was on fire.

Crews had managed 3% containment by Thursday night, but lost all progress by Friday as the fire grew, according to the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire). At least two people have been injured, more than 130 buildings have been destroyed, and another 4,000 have been threatened, according to the agency.

“The fire quickly began to outpace our resources because of the dry fuels, the hot weather, the low humidities and the wind,” Kory Honea, the Butte county sheriff, said late on Thursday.

About 4,000 residents in unincorporated areas of Butte county and 400 residents of Chico were ordered to evacuate, he said.

The fire began in Chico’s Upper Bidwell Park, an area beloved by residents for hiking and swimming. A 42-year-old California man was arrested on Thursday and accused of starting the fire by pushing a burning car into a gully.

Firefighters could be heard over the scanner on Thursday trying to assist residents in the area who were trapped by flames and struggling to evacuate, including a pair with five horses.

“You have to be ready to go,” Honea told residents. “This county has seen time and time again where people have waited too long and they have lost their lives.”

The fire has left the entire area on edge and stirred painful memories. Nearly six years ago, tens of thousands of people sought refuge in Chico when the Camp fire, California’s deadliest wildfire, destroyed the nearby town of Paradise and killed 85 people. In 2020, the North Complex fire killed 16 people in Butte county.

In 2021, the Dixie fire burned nearly 1m acres and devastated the nearby town of Greenville. And earlier this year, the Thompson fire near Oroville destroyed dozens of structures.

In just three days, the Park fire has grown larger than the Camp fire. Some residents in Paradise and Magalia, which was also hit hard by the 2018 fire, are now under evacuation warnings.

When the fire first started on Wednesday, Basil, the Forest Ranch resident, didn’t think it would reach her, she said.

But by Thursday afternoon, smoke had covered the sun, and everything became orange, she said. Shortly after, she and her neighbors received mandatory evacuation orders.

Basil, who is a craniosacral therapist, quickly packed a suitcase, grabbed her cat, tried to quickly clean up around her home, and loaded up her car to leave.

She arrived at a friend’s place out of the evacuation zone around an hour and a half later. Basil is not sure how long she will be displaced, but is expecting it to be anywhere from one to three weeks, she said.

“I am feeling pretty 50-50 about the survival of my home,” she said. “I’m very close to the fire line, and this is a very explosive fire, and it’s hot and windy and so anything can happen.”

Thursday’s wasn’t Basil’s first escape in 20 years of living in the region; she was displaced for 11 days during the Camp fire.

Firefighters across North America are also working intensively to contain other wildfires across the region, including in Washington, Oregon and other states, as well as parts of Canada , as heatwaves reaching record-breaking temperatures continue.

The Durkee fire in Oregon, which started on 17 July and quickly became the largest active fire in the US, was 20% contained on Friday, according to officials . It has so far burned more than 280,000 acres (113,312 hectares).

The pilot of a firefighting plane that disappeared in eastern Oregon while battling the Falls fire has died, officials said. A search-and-rescue team located the single-engine plane, in steep, forested terrain.

In Idaho, multiple communities were evacuated after lightning strikes sparked wildfires there, officials said on Friday . Multiple structures were lost, and the entire town of Juliaetta, a town of just over 600 residents about 27 miles south-east of the University of Idaho’s Moscow campus, was evacuated, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce tribal hatchery complex, which breeds salmon.

Videos posted to social media showed a man fleeing Juliaetta, driving past a building and trees engulfed in flames as a tunnel of smoke rises over the roadway.

As of Friday morning, parts of California, Oregon, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska and Idaho remained under the National Weather Service’s red-flag warning , meaning that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now, or will shortly.

Air-quality alerts are in effect in areas of Arizona, Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Nebraska due to wildfire smoke. Parts of Colorado saw wildfire smoke in their skies this week , but conditions appear to have improved as of Friday.

The National Weather Service has also issued fire weather watch warnings –meaning that there is a potential for critical fire weather conditions – for areas of Utah beginning on Saturday.

As of Friday morning, the National Interagency Fire Center had reported 96 large active wildfires that were being managed across the country. The fires had, by Thursday, burned more than 1.6m acres, with many of the fires in the north-west of the US exhibiting “extreme fire behavior”.

And in Canada, a fast-moving wildfire destroyed the town of Jasper in Jasper national park in the Rockies. At least 25,000 people were forced to flee.

Across the US west and Canada, the fires have largely been fueled by dry, hot weather and fanned by strong winds. The ignitions came from a variety of sources, but scientists agree that overall, global heating is driving fiercer and more explosive wildfires.

The Associated Press contributed reporting