wildfires
California wildfires destroy homes; winds hamper containment
Dry and windy weather dogged firefighters’ efforts to contain destructive fires that are devouring the bone-dry forests of drought-stricken Northern California on Thursday.
An estimated 11,000 firefighters were on the lines of more than a dozen large wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes and other buildings, forced thousands of people to flee communities and filled skies with smoke.
The U.S. Forest Service announced that it will close nine national forests in the region beginning on Aug. 22 and running through Sept. 6 because of extreme fire conditions and because firefighting resources have been stretched thin by the sheer number of blazes burning around the country.
The monstrous Dixie Fire, burning since July 13 in the northern Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades, ballooned further to about 1,060 square miles (2,745 square kilometers) and was only 35% contained, authorities said.
Read:Fueled by winds, largest wildfire moves near California city
The fire, which gutted the town of Greenville two weeks ago, has destroyed more than 1,200 buildings including 649 homes, according to ongoing damage assessments.
About 100 miles (161 kilometers) to the south, there was still no official count of the number of homes destroyed when winds whipped the Caldor Fire into an inferno that roared through the Sierra town of Grizzly Flats this week. Those who viewed the aftermath saw few homes still standing in the community of 1,200 residents.
Fire managers were rushing resources to the fire growing on steep slopes in a forested region southwest of Lake Tahoe. More than 650 firefighters and 13 helicopters were assigned to the blaze, and air tankers from throughout the state were flying fire suppression missions there as conditions allowed, authorities said.
“The hope is with the additional resources and personnel on scene, we can really start to build that box around this fire and start the containment,” said Keith Wade of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Evacuees from the Caldor Fire found refuge in places like the Green Valley Community Church in Placerville, west of the fire, where they set up tents and trailers in a parking lot. Adrian Childress, 7, painted pictures to pass the time and a special tent was set up for people who wished to pray.
Read:Thunderstorms, heat fuel wildfires burning across West
In Omo Ranch, close to where the fire started, a bulldozer ripped out trees to build a fire line and stop the blaze from spreading south.
While nearly the entire town evacuated, Thurman Conroy and his wife, Michele, stayed behind to protect their house and their business, Conroy General Store. But they were prepared to flee if the fire gets too close.
“The fire wants us bad because it’s made every attempt it can to get out of that canyon and up this way,” Thurman said. “So they keep beating it down. And it’s just ... it’s resilient, it’s stubborn, it won’t go away. That’s all we can do.”
California’s fires were among 104 large, active blazes Thursday in 12 states, mostly in the West, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Those fires combined have scorched nearly 4,000 square miles (10,360 square kilometers).
Climate change has made the West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Read:Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
Drought, heat, low humidity and winds have left California vegetation ready to burn this summer. More than two-dozen new fires erupted Wednesday alone. All but two were quickly contained.
One small but destructive blaze burned through a mobile home park and reduced an estimated 50 homes to ashes in Lake County, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of San Francisco. Elsewhere in the northwestern region of the state, two big fires continued to burn in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
Meanwhile, Pacific Gas & Electric said Thursday that it had restored power to nearly 50,000 Northern California customers whose power was shut off Tuesday to prevent new fires from being ignited if electrical lines were damaged during high winds. The utility said it found at least 10 instances of weather-related damage, including four that potentially could have caused fires if the utility hadn’t de-energized power lines.
FM mourns loss of lives due to wildfires in Algeria
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has expressed deep condolences over the death of scores of Algerian people including 25 soldiers in the incident of wildfires in the Kabyle region of Algeria.
In a message sent to Foreign Minister of Algeria Sabri Boukadoum, Dr Momen conveyed his deep sympathies to the families of the victims and prayed that they would have enough fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.
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‘‘I pay my sincere tribute to the 25 soldiers who dedicated their lives in their efforts for saving the fire-ravaged villagers, whom I consider to be martyrs,’’ Dr Momen said.
The Foreign Minister prayed for the early recovery of the injured soldiers and the villagers.
He hoped that the affected villagers would be able to overcome the calamitous situation and rebuild their life soon.
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Fueled by winds, largest wildfire moves near California city
A wildfire raged through a small Northern California forest town Tuesday, burning dozens of homes as dangerously dry and windy weather also continued to fuel other massive blazes and prompted the nation’s largest utility to begin shutting off power to 51,000 customers.
The Caldor fire in the northern Sierra Nevada had burned an estimated 50 homes in and around Grizzly Flats, a town of about 1,200 people, fire officials said at a community meeting.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for El Dorado County because of the blaze, which tripled in size between Monday and Tuesday afternoon to nearly 50 square miles (129 square kilometers),
To the north the Dixie Fire — the largest of some 100 active wildfires in more than a dozen Western states — was advancing toward Susanville, population about 18,000.
Read:Thunderstorms, heat fuel wildfires burning across West
Meanwhile, Pacific Gas & Electric announced it had begun shutting off power to some 51,000 customers in small portions of 18 northern counties to prevent winds from knocking down or fouling power lines and sparking new blazes.
The utility said the precautionary shutoffs were focused in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the North Coast, the North Valley and the North Bay mountains and could last into Wednesday afternoon.
Very few homes were left standing in Grizzly Flats, where streets were littered with downed power lines and poles. Houses were reduced to smoldering ash and twisted metal with only chimneys rising above the ruins. A post office and elementary school were also destroyed.
Two people with serious or severe injuries were airlifted to hospitals from the Grizzly Flats area, fire officials said.
Derek Shaves and Tracy Jackson were helping their friend salvage food and other supplies from the Grizzly Pub & Grub, a business in the evacuation zone that wasn’t touched by the blaze.
Shaves said he visited Grizzly Flats Tuesday and saw his home and most of the houses in his neighborhood had been destroyed by the fire.
“It’s a pile of ash,” he said. “Everybody on my block is a pile of ash and every block that I visited — but for five separate homes that were safe — was totally devastated.”
At the Dixie Fire, numerous resources were put into the Susanville area, where residents were warned to be ready to evacuate, said Mark Brunton, an operations section chief.
“It’s not out of play, and the next 24 hours are going to be crucial to watch as to what the fire is going to do there,” he told an online briefing.
Read: Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
To the east, spot fires became established south of the small community of Janesville, which had been ordered evacuated. Some structures were lost there — images captured by The Associated Press showed a home consumed by flames — but a surge of firefighters was able to herd the fire around the majority of the town, Brunton said.
The Dixie Fire, which had burned some 600 homes, is the largest of the major wildfires burning in Western U.S. states that have seen historic drought and weeks of high temperatures and dry weather that have left trees, brush and grasslands as flammable as tinder. Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Susanville is the seat of Lassen County and the largest city that the Dixie Fire, named for the road where it started, has approached since it broke out last month. The former Sierra Nevada logging and mining town has two state prisons, a nearby federal lockup and a casino.
Ash fell from the advancing fire, and a police statement urged residents “to be alert and be ready to evacuate” if the fire threatens the city.
The Dixie Fire has scorched more than 940 square miles (2,434 square kilometers) in the northern Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades since it ignited on July 13 and eventually merged with a smaller blaze. It’s less than a third contained.
Investigations are continuing, but PG&E has notified utility regulators that the Dixie and Fly fires may have been caused by trees falling into its power lines. The Dixie Fire began near the town of Paradise, which was devastated by a 2018 wildfire ignited by PG&E equipment during strong winds. Eighty-five people died.
Ongoing damage surveys have counted more than 1,100 buildings destroyed, including 630 homes, and more than 16,000 structures remained threatened. Numerous evacuation orders were in effect.
Near the Caldor Fire, people were offering assistance to evacuees, including the four-footed kind. Susan Collins of Placerville used her horse trailer to help move two horses Tuesday after offering help on an El Dorado County Facebook page.
“I know not everybody is prepared when something like this happens, and my purpose in life is to be there to help people,” she said.
Read: Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
Across the state line in Nevada, school administrators delayed start times in the Reno-Sparks because of a cloak of wildfire smoke from the Dixie Fire blanketing the region. Smoke plumes from the Caldor Fire were also visible from northern Nevada.
Two dozen fires were burning in Montana and nearly 50 more in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, according to the National Fire Interagency Center.
In Montana, authorities ordered evacuations on Tuesday for several remote communities in north- central Montana as strong winds propelled a large wildfire toward inhabited areas.
The mandatory evacuation covered Lodge Pole, a town of about 300 people on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, and the former mining town of Zortman, which has about two dozen people, KOJM reported.
Thunderstorms, heat fuel wildfires burning across West
Johnnie Brookwood had never heard of a road named Dixie when a wildfire began a month ago in the forestlands of Northern California.
Within three weeks, it exploded into the largest wildfire burning in the U.S., destroying more than 1,000 homes and businesses including a lodge in the gold rush-era town of Greenville where she was renting a room for $650 per month.
“At first (the fire) didn’t affect us at all, it was off in some place called Dixie, I didn’t even know what it means,” Brookwood, 76, said Saturday. “Then it was ‘Oh no we have to go too?’ Surely Greenville won’t burn, but then it did and now all we can see are ashes.”
Read:Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
Firefighters faced “another critical day” as thunderstorms pushed flames closer to two towns not far from where the Dixie Fire destroyed much of Greenville last week.
The thunderstorms, which began Friday, didn’t produce much rain but whipped up wind and created lightning strikes, forcing crews to focus on using bulldozers to build lines and keep the blaze from reaching Westwood, a town of about 1,700 people. Westwood was placed under evacuation orders Aug. 5.
Wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) also pushed the fire closer to Janesville, a town of about 1,500 people, east of Greenville, said Jake Cagle, the operations chief at the east zone of the fire.
“Very tough day in there yesterday in the afternoon and the night (crew) picked up the pieces and tried to secure the edge the best they could with the resources they had,” he said in a briefing Saturday.
With a similar forecast of thunderstorms Saturday, firefighters faced “another critical day, another challenging day,” Cagle said.
The fire was among more than 100 large wildfires burning in more than a dozen states in the West seared by drought and hot, bone-dry weather that turned forests, brushlands, meadows and pastures into tinder.
The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system.
The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.
More than 6,000 firefighters alone were battling the Dixie Fire, which has ravaged nearly 845 square miles (2,100 square kilometers) — an area the size of Tokyo — and was 31% contained.
“The size is unimaginable, its duration and its impact on these people, all of us, including me, is unbelieve,” Brookwood said while staying in her third evacuation center.
Read:Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
The cause of the fire has not been determined. Pacific Gas and Electric has said the fire may have been started when a tree fell on its power line.
There also was a danger of new fires erupting because of unstable weather conditions, including extreme heat across the northern half of the West and a chance of thunderstorms that could bring lightning to Northern California, Oregon and Nevada, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
A fast-moving fire broke out Saturday afternoon east of Salt Lake City, shutting down Interstate 80 and prompting the evacuation of Summit Park, a mountain community of 6,600 people. Fire officials said the blaze was burning about 3 square miles (8 square kilometers) and threatening thousands of homes and power lines.
In southeastern Montana, firefighters were gaining ground on a pair of fires that chewed through vast rangelands and at one point threatened the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
The fires were caused by heat from coal seams, the deposits of coal found in the ground in the area, said Peggy Miller, a spokeswoman for the fires.
Mandatory evacuation for the tribal headquarters town of Lame Deer remained in place due to poor air quality, she added.
Smoke also drove air pollution levels to unhealthy or very unhealthy levels in parts of Northern California, Oregon and Idaho, according to the U.S. Air Quality Index.
Hot, dry weather with strong afternoon winds also propelled several fires in Washington state, and similar weather was expected into the weekend, fire officials said.
In southeastern Oregon, two new wildfires started by lightning Thursday near the California border spread rapidly through juniper trees, sagebrush and evergreen trees.
The Patton Meadow Fire about 14 miles (23 kilometers) west of Lakeview, near the California border, exploded to 11 square miles (28 square kilometers) in less than 24 hours in a landscape sucked dry by extreme drought. It was 10% contained.
Read:Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
Triple-digit temperatures and bone-dry conditions in Oregon could increase fire risks through the weekend.
Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Dozens of fires also are burning in western Canada and in Europe, including Greece, where a massive wildfire has decimated forests and torched homes.
Western fires threaten thousands of homes, strain resources
A month-old wildfire burning through forestlands in Northern California lurched toward a small lumber town as blazes across the U.S. Western states strained resources and threatened thousands of homes with destruction.
Crews were cutting back brush and using bulldozers to build lines to keep the Dixie Fire from reaching Westwood east of Lake Almanor, not far from where the lightning-caused blaze destroyed much of the town of Greenville last week.
The entire town of about 1,700 people was placed under evacuation orders Aug. 5 as the blaze inched closer.
To the northwest, the Monument Fire — one of at least three large blazes sparked by lightning last month — continued to grow after destroying a dozen homes and threatened about 2,500 homes in a sparsely populated region. U.S. Forest Service officials said Friday that flying embers ignited spot fires as far as a mile ahead of the main blaze in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
They were among more than 100 large wildfires burning in a dozen Western states seared by drought and hot, bone-dry weather that has turned forests, brushlands, meadows and pastures into tinder.
The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system.
The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, and the agency is facing “critical resources limitations,” said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.
READ: Evacuations lifted as progress made against western fires
More than 6,000 firefighters alone were battling the Dixie Fire, which has destroyed more than 1,000 homes, businesses and other structures and was the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. Its flames have ravaged more than 800 square miles (well over 2,000 square kilometers) — an area larger than the city of London.
There also was a danger of new fires erupting because of unstable weather conditions, including a chance of thunderstorms that could bring lightning to northern California, Oregon and Nevada, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
“Mother nature just kind of keeps throwing us obstacles our way,” said Edwin Zuniga, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which was working with the Forest Service to tamp out the Dixie Fire.
In southeastern Montana, firefighters and residents were scrambling to save hundreds of homes as flames advanced across the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
The blaze was more than 50% contained. But its southern edge was still burning near the tribal headquarters town of Lame Deer, where a mandatory evacuation remained in place, and a second fire was threatening from the opposite direction.
The fires already had burned or threatened grasslands that many locals with cattle and horses depend upon for their livelihoods, Montana officials said.
Smoke from the blazes grew so thick Friday that the health clinic in Lame Deer was shut down after its air filters could not keep up with the pollution, Northern Cheyenne Tribe spokesperson Angel Becker said.
Smoke also drove air pollution levels to unhealthy or very unhealthy levels in parts of Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Northern California, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Hot, dry weather with strong afternoon winds also propelled several fires in Washington state, and similar weather was expected into the weekend, fire officials said.
In southeastern Oregon, two new wildfires started by lightning Thursday near the California border spread rapidly through juniper trees, sagebrush and evergreen trees.
Gov. Kate Brown declared an emergency for one of the fires to mobilize crews and other resources to the area of ranches, rural subdivisions and RV parks about 14 miles (23 kilometers) from the small town of Lakeview.
Triple-digit temperatures and bone-dry conditions in Oregon, enduring a third day of extreme heat, could increase fire risks through the weekend.
READ: Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Dozens of fires also are burning in western Canada and in Europe, including Greece, where a massive wildfire has decimated forests and torched homes.
Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
A metal roof sits atop the burned remains of a homestead on the once-lush slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea — a dormant volcano and the state’s tallest peak — charred cars and motorcycles strewn about as wind-whipped sand and ash blast the scorched landscape.
Generations of Kumu Micah Kamohoalii’s family have lived on these lands reserved for Native Hawaiians, and his cousin owns this house destroyed by the state’s largest-ever wildfire.
“I’ve never seen a fire this big,” Kamohoalii said. “Waimea has had fires, many of them before and some maybe a few hundred acres, but not this size.”
The fire has burned more than 70 square miles (181 square kilometers) in the two weeks it has been going. But it wasn’t the first time this area has burned, and won’t be the last. Like many islands in the Pacific, Hawaii’s dry seasons are getting more extreme with climate change.
Read:Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
“Everyone knows Waimea to be the pasturelands and to be all the green rolling hills. And so when I was young, all of this was always green,” Kamohoalii said. “In the last 10 to 15 years, it has been really, really dry.”
Huge wildfires highlight the dangers of climate change-related heat and drought for many communities throughout the U.S. West and other hotspots around the world. But experts say relatively small fires on typically wet, tropical islands in the Pacific are also on the rise, creating a cycle of ecological damage that affects vital and limited resources for millions of residents.
From Micronesia to Hawaii, wildfires have been a growing problem for decades. With scarce funding to prevent and suppress these fires, island communities have struggled to address the problem.
“On tropical islands, fires have a unique set of impacts,” said Clay Trauernicht, an ecosystems and wildfire researcher at the University of Hawaii. “First and foremost, fires were very rare prior to human arrival on any Pacific island. The vegetation, the native ecosystems, really evolved in the absence of frequent fires. And so when you do get these fires, they tend to kind of wreak havoc.”
But it’s not just burnt land that is affected. Fires on islands harm environments from the top of mountains to below the ocean’s surface.
“Once a fire occurs, what you’re doing is removing vegetation,” Trauernicht said. “And we often get heavy rainfall events. All of that exposed soil gets carried downstream and we have these direct impacts of erosion, sedimentation on our marine ecosystems. So it really hammers our coral reefs as well.”
Pacific island reefs support local food production, create barriers to large storm surges and are a critical part of tourism that keeps many islands running.
The wet season on tropical islands also causes fire-adapted grasses to grow tall and thick, building fuel for the next summer’s wildfires.
“Guinea grass grows six inches a day in optimal conditions and a six-foot tall patch of grass can throw 20-foot flame lengths,” said Michael Walker, Hawaii’s state fire protection forester. “So what we have here are really fast-moving, very hot, very dangerous fires.”
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Walker said such non-native grasses that have proliferated in Hawaii are adapted to fire, but native species and shrubs are not.
“While (these wildfires) may not compare to the size and duration of what folks have in the western United States, we burn a significant portion of our lands every year because of these grass fires, and they’re altering our natural ecosystems and converting forests to grass,” he said.
The latest wildfire on Hawaii’s Big Island burned about 1% of the state’s total land, and other islands in the Pacific such as Palau, Saipan and Guam burn even more — up to 10% in severe fire years.
On average, Guam has nearly 700 wildfires a year, Palau about 175 and Saipan about 20, according to data from 2018.
Guam, like many other places, has long used fire as a tool. Farmers sometimes use it to clear fields and hunters have been known to burn areas while poaching.
The U.S. territory’s forestry chief Christine Camacho Fejeran said fires on the island are mostly caused by arson. “So all of Guam’s wildfires are human-caused issues, whether it’s an intentional or an escaped backyard fire or another (cause),” she said.
On average, Fejeran said, 6,000 to 7,000 acres (2,430 to 2,830 hectares) of the island burns each year, amounting to about 5% of its land.
While no homes have been lost to recent wildfires on Guam, Fejeran believes that trend will come to an end — unless more is done to combat the fires.
The island has made some changes in fire legislation, management, education and enforcement. Arson has become a chargeable offense, but Fejeran says enforcement remains an obstacle in the tight-knit community.
Read: 'We fought a great battle': Greece defends wildfire response
Back in Hawaii, last week’s blaze destroyed three homes, but the fire threatened many more.
Mikiala Brand, who has lived for two decades on a 50-acre homestead, watched as flames came within a few hundred yards (meters) of her house.
As the fire grew closer, she saw firefighters, neighbors and the National Guard racing into her rural neighborhood to fight it. She had to evacuate her beloved home twice in less than 24 hours.
“Of course it was scary,” she said. “But I had faith that the strong, the brave and the talented, and along with nature and Akua, which is our name for the universal spirit, would take care.”
Demonstrating the tenacity of many Native Hawaiians in her farming and ranching community, Brand said, “I only worry about what I have control over.”
Down the mountain in Waikoloa Village, a community of about 7,000, Linda Hunt was also forced to evacuate. She works at a horse stable and scrambled to save the animals as flames whipped closer.
“We only have one and a half roads to get out — you have the main road and then you have the emergency access,” Hunt said of a narrow dirt road. “Everybody was trying to evacuate, there was a lot of confusion.”
The fire was eventually put out just short of the densely populated neighborhood, but had flames reached the homes, it could have been disastrous on the parched landscape.
“When you have high winds like we get here, it’s difficult no matter how big your fire break is, it’s going to blow right through,” Hunt said.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
While fires are becoming more difficult to fight because of dry and hot conditions associated with climate change, experts say the Pacific islands still can help prevent these blazes from causing ecological damage and property losses.
“Fire presents a pretty interesting component of kind of all these climate change impacts that we’re dealing with in the sense that they are manageable,” said Trauernicht, the University of Hawaii wildfire expert.
In addition to education and arson prevention, he said, land use — such as grazing practices and reforestation that reduce volatile grasses — could help.
“It’s within our control, potentially, to reduce the impacts that we’re seeing with fires,” Trauernicht said. “Both in terms of forest loss as well as the impacts on coral reefs.”
Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern Montana towns Thursday as continuing hot, dry weather throughout the West drove flames through more than a dozen states.
Several thousand people remained under evacuation orders as the Richard Spring Fire advanced across the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire — which started July 13 and is the largest wildfire burning in the nation — threatened a dozen small communities in the northern Sierra Nevada even though its southern end was mostly corralled by fire lines.
Read: Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
The blaze had burned over 780 square miles (over 2,000 square kilometers), destroyed some 550 homes and nearly obliterated the town of Greenville. It was 30% contained.
On Wednesday, the Montana fire displayed extreme behavior and had grown by tens of thousands of acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The blaze, which was only 15% surrounded, began Sunday and powerful gusts caused it to explode across more than 230 square miles (600 square kilometers).
By nightfall, the fire had crept within about 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) of the evacuated town of Lame Deer, leaping over a highway where officials had hoped to stop it.
Rancher Jimmy Peppers sat on his horse east of town, watching an orange glow grow near the site of his house.
“I didn’t think it would cross the highway so I didn’t even move my farm equipment,” said Peppers, who spent the afternoon herding his cattle onto a neighbor’s pasture closer to town. “I don’t know if I’ll have a house in the morning.”
The town of about 2,000 people is home to the tribal headquarters and several subdivisions and is surrounded by rugged, forested terrain. By late Wednesday a second fire was closing in on Lame Deer from the west, while the Richard Spring fire raged to the east.
Read: 'We fought a great battle': Greece defends wildfire response
A few miles from town, Krystal Two Bulls and some friends stuck around to clear brush from her yard in hopes of protecting it from the flames. Thick plumes of smoke rose from behind a tree-covered ridgeline just above the house.
“We’re packed and we’re loaded so if we have to go, we will,” Two Bull said. “I’m not fearful; I’m prepared. Here you don’t just run from fire or abandon your house.”
Also ordered to leave were about 600 people in and around Ashland, a small town just outside the reservation. Local, state and federal firefighters were joined by ranchers using their own heavy equipment to carve out fire lines around houses.
The National Weather Service said a ridge of high pressure moving into the area would pump temperatures into the 90s over the weekend.
Drought conditions have left trees, grass and brush bone-dry throughout many Western states, leaving them ripe for ignition. Montana alone had 25 large wildfires burning, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
At the same time, California and some other states were facing flows of monsoonal moisture that were too high to bring real rain but could create thunderstorms bringing new fire risks from dry lightning and erratic winds.
Read:Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
In Northern California, a number of wildfires and the threat of more prompted three national forests to close down the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area, a half-million-acre area of granite peaks, lakes and trails, into November.
“Tracking hikers in unsafe areas pulls much-needed aircraft away from firefighting efforts, and adds risk and exposure to first responders. Additionally, forest managers hope to limit the possibility of human-caused fires with this temporary full closure,” said a forest statement.
Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. The more than 100 large wildfires in the American West come as parts of Europe are also burning.
Nearly 900 buildings destroyed by massive California fire
California’s largest single wildfire in recorded history kept pushing through forestlands on Tuesday as fire crews tried to protect rural communities from flames that have destroyed hundreds of homes.
Clear skies over parts of the month-old Dixie Fire have allowed aircraft to rejoin nearly 6,000 firefighters in the attack this week.
“Whether or not we can fly depends very much on where the smoke is. There’s still some areas where it’s just too smoky,” fire spokesman Edwin Zuniga said.
Heavy smoke reduced visibility on the fire’s west end while the east end saw renewed action as afternoon winds took hold, fire officials said.
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Burning through bone-dry trees, brush and grass, the fire by Tuesday had destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including nearly 550 homes. Much of the small community of Greenville was incinerated during an explosive run of flames last week.
But the reports are “definitely subject to change” because assessment teams still can’t get into many areas to count what burned, Zuniga said.
The Dixie Fire, named for the road where it started, also threatened 14,000 buildings in more than a dozen small mountain and rural communities in the northern Sierra Nevada.
Crews have cut thousands of acres of new fire lines aimed at preventing the fire from spreading. Officials believe the fire lines created on the blaze’s southern side will hold the fire at bay there, but the fire’s future is unknown, authorities said.
“We don’t know where this fire is going to end and where it’s going to land. It continues to challenge us,” said Chris Carlton, supervisor for Plumas National Forest.
Temperatures are expected to rise and the humidity is expected to fall over the next few days, with triple-digit high temperatures possible later in the week along with a return of strong afternoon winds, fire meteorologist Rich Thompson warned Monday evening.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
The fire that broke out July 14 grew slightly on Tuesday to an area of 766 square miles (1,984 square kilometers) but containment increased to 27%, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The Dixie Fire is about half the size of the August Complex, a series of lightning-caused 2020 fires across seven counties that were fought together and that state officials consider California’s largest wildfire overall.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday declared a state of emergency for northern Shasta, Trinity and Tehama counties. The declaration frees up state resources to help fight fires in those counties and give assistance to residents affected by he blazes.
California’s raging wildfires are among some 100 large blazes burning across 15 states, mostly in the West, where historic drought conditions have left lands parched and ripe for ignition.
The Dixie Fire is the largest single fire in California history and the largest currently burning in the U.S. Nearly a quarter of all firefighters assigned to Western fires are fighting California blazes, said Rocky Oplinger, an incident commander.
Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. The fires across the West come as parts of Europe are also fighting large blazes spurred by tinder-dry conditions.
Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires
In southeastern Montana, the small towns of Ashland and Lame Deer were ordered evacuated Tuesday as a wildfire threatened hundreds of homes outside the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Rosebud County Sheriff Allen Fulton said flames were being driven by strong, erratic winds.
“We’re actually pretty worried about it,” Fulton said. “It’s jumping highways, it’s jumping streams. A paved road is about a good a fire line as we could ask for, and it’s going over that in spots.”
Northwest of the Dixie Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, hundreds of homes remained threatened by two fires. However, nearly 50% of the McFarland Fire was contained. New evacuation orders were issued Monday for residents near the Monument Fire, which was only about 3% contained.
South of the Dixie Fire, firefighters prevented further growth of the River Fire, which broke out last Wednesday near the community of Colfax and destroyed 68 homes. It was nearly 80% contained.
Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
At least 25 soldiers died saving residents from wildfires ravaging mountain forests and villages east of Algeria’s capital, the president announced Tuesday night as the civilian toll rose to at least 17.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers were “martyrs” who saved 100 people from the fires in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the North African nation’s Berber population. Eleven other soldiers were burned fighting the fires, four of them seriously, the Defense Ministry said.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
Prime Minister Aïmene Benabderrahmane later said on state TV that 17 civilians had lost their lives, raising the count of citizens from seven previously and bringing the total death toll to 42. He provided no details.
The mountainous Kabyle region, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages and with temperatures rising has had limited water. Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and rudimentary tools. The region has no water-dumping planes.
The deaths and injuries Tuesday occurred mainly around Kabyle’s capital of Tizi-Ouzou, which is flanked by mountains, and also in Bejaia, which borders the Mediterranean Sea, the president said.
The prime minister told state television that initial reports from security services showed the fires in Kabyle were “highly synchronized,” adding that “leads one to believe these were criminal acts.” Earlier, Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud traveled to Kabyle to assess the situation and also blamed the fires there on arson.
“Thirty fires at the same time in the same region can’t be by chance,” Beldjoud said on national television, although no arrests were announced.
There were no immediate details to explain the high death toll among the military. A photo pictured on the site of the Liberte daily showed a soldier with a shovel dousing sputtering flames with dirt, his automatic weapon slung over his shoulder.
Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires
Dozens of blazes sprang up Monday in Kabyle and elsewhere, and Algerian authorities sent in the army to help citizens battle blazes and evacuate. Multiple fires were burning through forests and devouring olive trees, cattle and chickens that provide the livelihoods of families in the Kabyle region.
The Civil Protection authority counted 41 blazes in 18 wilayas, or regions, as of Monday night, with 21 of them burning around Tizi Ouzou.
A 92-year-old woman living in the Kabyle mountain village of Ait Saada said the scene Monday night looked like “the end of the world.”
“We were afraid,” Fatima Aoudia told The Associated Press. “The entire hill was transformed into a giant blaze.”
Aoudia compared the scene to bombings by French troops during Algeria’s brutal independence war, which ended in 1962.
“These burned down forests. It’s a part of me that is gone,” Aoudia said. “It’s a drama for humanity, for nature. It’s a disaster.”
Read: Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
An opposition party with roots in the Kabyle region, the RCD, denounced authorities’ slow response to the rash of blazes as citizens organized local drives to collect bottled water and other supplies. Calls for help, including from Algerians living abroad, went out on social media, one in English trending on Twitter with the hashtag #PrayforAlgeria. Photos and videos posted showed plumes of dark smoke and orange skies rising above hillside villages or soldiers in army fatigues without protective clothing.
Climate scientists say there is little doubt climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms. A worsening drought and heat — both linked to climate change — are driving wildfires in the U.S. West and Russia’s northern region of Siberia. Extreme heat is also fueling the massive fires in Greece and Turkey.
'We fought a great battle': Greece defends wildfire response
As the worst of Greece’s massive wildfires were being tamed Tuesday, the country’s civil protection chief defended the firefighting efforts, saying every resource was thrown into the battle against what he described as the fire service’s biggest-ever challenge.
Nikos Hardalias said authorities “truly did what was humanly possible” against blazes that destroyed tens of thousands of hectares (acres) of forest and hundreds of homes, killed a volunteer firefighter and forced more than 60,000 people to flee. Two other firefighters were in intensive care with severe burns.
“We handled an operationally unique situation, with 586 fires in eight days during the worst weather conditions we’ve seen in 40 years,” Hardalias told a news conference. “Never was there such a combination of adverse factors in the history of the fire service.”
Greece had just experienced its worst heat wave since 1987, which left its forests tinder-dry. Other nearby nations such as Turkey and Italy also faced the same searing temperatures and quickly spreading fires.
READ: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
Worsening drought and heat – both linked to climate change – have also fueled wildfires this summer in the U.S. West and in Siberia in northern Russia.
Scientists say there is little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events. Researchers can directly link a single event to climate change only through intensive data analysis, but they say such calamities are expected to happen more frequently.
In Greece, the worst blaze still burning Tuesday was in the northern section of Evia, the country’s second-largest island, which is linked by a bridge to the mainland north of Athens and is a favorite holiday destination for the Greek capital’s residents.
Nearly 900 firefighters, 50 ground teams and more than 200 vehicles were fighting the blaze that broke out Aug. 3, the fire service said. They included crews from Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Cyprus and Poland — part of a huge international response to Greece’s plea for assistance.
Fourteen helicopters provided air support Tuesday on Evia, including three from Serbia, two from Switzerland and two from Egypt. The wildfire on Evia, unlike many in the United States, was burning in an area in which villages and forests are entwined.
Hardalias said all the fire fronts on Evia were waning, but firefighters were guarding the perimeter of the blaze, particularly around a cluster of villages that were among the dozens evacuated on the island in recent days. However, heavy smoke from the fires has often reduced visibility to zero, making it too dangerous for water-dropping aircraft to assist ground forces.
READ: Californians endure intense weekend of wildfire fears
According to EU wildfire data and satellite imagery, more than 49,000 hectares (121,000 acres) have burned up on Evia — by far the worst damage from any of the recent fires in Greece.
Several other wildfires were burning in the country, with the most significant in the southern Peloponnese region, where new evacuations were ordered Tuesday afternoon. About 400 firefighters, including teams from the Czech Republic and Britain, battled that blaze, assisted by five helicopters and 23 water-dropping planes from several countries.
A judicial investigation is under way into the causes of the fires, including any links to criminal activity. Several arson suspects have been arrested.
“I don’t know whether there is any organized arson plan, that’s not my job,” Hardalias told the news conference. But it was his “feeling” that at least with the flames near ancient Olympia, the seven or eight fires that broke out in close succession could be due to arson.
Also on Tuesday, a woman convicted of intentionally starting a fire in an Athens park last week was sentenced to five years in prison.
Residents and local officials on Evia have complained about a lack of water-dropping planes in the early stages that they say left the fire to grow to such proportions that flying became too hazardous.
Hardalias argued that when the Evia blaze broke out, authorities were already facing other enormous challenges. A major forest fire was burning through the northern outskirts of Athens, forcing the evacuation of thousands, and another was coursing through villages towards ancient Olympia — a hugely important archaeological site in the Peloponnese where the ancient Olympic Games were held for more than 1,000 years.
“Every house lost is a tragedy for all of us. It’s a knife in our heart,” he said.
Asked whether he was satisfied with the country’s firefighting response, Hardalias said: “Obviously, there can be no satisfaction after such a catastrophe. But all our available forces, ground and airborne, were sent immediately to the fires.”
“Whether we could have done something different remains to be seen,” he said. “But in any case, we fought a great battle, and the losses were among those fighting it, not among civilians.”
Greek authorities have emphasized saving lives, issuing evacuation alerts for dozens of villages and neighborhoods this summer. In 2018, a deadly fire that engulfed a seaside settlement near Athens killed more than 100 people, including some who drowned trying to escape the flames and smoke by sea.
READ: Town burns to ashes in raging Northern California wildfire
Critics say the government’s focus on evacuating villages prevented villagers with local knowledge from helping firefighters and led to more property destruction.
Greece’s center-right government has pledged to provide compensation to everyone who suffered loss from the wildfires and to undertake a massive reforestation effort to replace the trees that have burned.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a special cabinet meeting Tuesday that owners of destroyed or damaged homes would receive up to 150,000 euros ($176,000) in state compensation, with initial payments to begin next week, while businesses and farmers will also get support and tax breaks.
In southwest Turkey, crews battled two fires Tuesday in the coastal province of Mugla, including a brush fire near Bodrum’s Gumusluk resort neighborhood. Bodrum’s mayor said the fire was close to being extinguished and no residential areas were threatened.
Meanwhile, firefighters quickly put out a new blaze in a forest in Istanbul’s Sariyer district.