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(Bloomberg) — Cooler temperatures and higher humidity in Northern California are helping firefighters slow a massive blaze that’s burned more than 350,000 acres of the American West and may last for many more weeks.
California’s so-called Park Fire, which authorities say was started by arson, has doubled in size since Friday, scorching parts of Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties. The expansion has made it the largest active blaze in the state and one of the biggest in California’s history.
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The fire was 12% contained as of Sunday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. Almost 4,000 firefighters and other personnel have been working to tame the fast-moving fire located about 85 miles (137 kilombeters) north of Sacramento.
“We had a huge cool down across all of Northern California yesterday,” David Rowe, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said Sunday. “The fire behavior likely won’t be as extreme as it was late last week and I think the behavior was quite a bit less yesterday compared to the first few days of the fire.”
The Park Fire has triggered evacuation orders and warnings and briefly threatened California’s power grid, damaging or destroying 71 structures.
“The fire is actively burning in heavy, receptive fuel beds,” Cal Fire said Sunday on its website. “This allows the fire to expand rapidly. Warm, windy, and dry conditions will increase risk of extreme fire activity, similar to what the fire has done previously. There will be higher temperatures and lower humidities today.”
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The blaze may take weeks, if not months to fully contain, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a climate scientist.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the fire and directed his team to do everything possible the federal government can to help put it out, according to a White House official.
Dangerous fires have swept across the West, with Oregon contending with the nearly 290,000-acre Durkee fire since a lightning strike on July 17. In Canada, Alberta’s resort town of Jasper and its iconic national park have also been engulfed in five devastating wildfires, two of which were classified as “out of control” as of Saturday, according to an official website monitoring the fires.
(Adds White House comment in parapraph 8.)
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