Massive Park Fire near Chico still 0% contained as wildfires burn in California and across the West (2024)

By REBECCA BOONE and JOHN ANTCZAK

Communities in the U.S. West and Canada were under siege from raging wildfires on Friday, as a fast-moving blaze sparked by lightning sent people fleeing on roads ringed with fire in rural Idaho and a human-caused inferno forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes in northern California.

A pilot was found dead in a crashed tanker plane that disappeared in eastern Oregon while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several Western states.

A Grant County Search and Rescue team located the aircraft Friday morning and confirmed the death, said Lisa Clark, a Bureau of Land Management information officer for the Falls Fire. The single-engine tanker, a small and nimble plane that looks like a crop duster, was located in steep, forested terrain after the search was suspended at nightfall the day before, Clark said.

The plane contracted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management went missing Thursday. The pilot was the only person on board. The Falls Fire, near the town of Seneca on the edge of the Malheur National Forest, has grown to 219 square miles (567 square kilometers) and is 55% contained, the government website InciWeb shows.

Park Fire map: Latest evacuations and perimeter for wildfire near Chico

Climate change is increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region endures recording-breaking heat and bone-dry conditions. More than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers) were burning in the U.S. on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In California, more than 130 structures have been destroyed and thousands more remain threatened by the state’s largest active wildfire. The Park Fire started Wednesday when a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then calmly blended in with others fleeing the scene, authorities said.

Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico, was arrested early Thursday and held without bail pending a Monday arraignment, officials said. There was no immediate reply to an email to the district attorney asking whether the suspect had legal representation or someone who could comment on his behalf.

By midday Friday, the fire was completely uncontained after burning more than 278 square miles (720 square kilometers) across the Sierra Nevada foothills above the city of 100,000. Barring a downward revision, it appeared to become California’s 20th largest wildfire on record, edging a 1977 blaze, according to Cal Fire statistics.

About 4,000 residents in unincorporated areas of Butte County and 400 residents of Chico were ordered to evacuate, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said late Thursday. Two minor injuries were reported, 134 structures were destroyed and some 4,200 were threatened.

“The fire quickly began to outpace our resources because of the dry fuels, the hot weather, the low humidities and the wind,” Butte County Fire Chief Garrett Sjolund said.

The Park Fire was burning to the northwest of Paradise, the Butte County community where in 2018 the notorious Camp Fire killed 85 people and incinerated thousands of homes, becoming California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said he wanted “to express regret and frustration by the fact that we are here once again.”

In an interview, Carli Parker recounted her escape from Forest Ranch, northeast of Chico.

As flames began to surround her community this week, Parker said, she and her family decided to leave. With fire burning across the street and having twice previously been forced out of homes by fires, she had little hope that her family residence was unscathed.

“I think I felt like I was in danger because the police had come to our house because we had signed up for early evacuation warnings, and they were running to their vehicle after telling us that we need to self-evacuate and they wouldn’t come back,” said Parker, a mother of five.

The most damage so far has been to the Canadian Rockies’ Jasper National Park, where a fast-moving wildfire forced 25,000 people to flee and devastated the park’s namesake town, a World Heritage site.

Oregon still has the biggest active blaze in the United States, the Durkee Fire, which combined with the Cow Fire to burn nearly 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers). It remains unpredictable and was only 20% contained Friday, according to the government website InciWeb.

In Idaho, lightning strikes sparked fast-moving wildfires and the evacuation of multiple communities, including one where a man drove past a building and trees engulfed in flames as a tunnel of smoke rose over the roadway.

Videos posted to social media include a man who said he heard explosions as he fled Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southeast of the University of Idaho’s campus in Moscow. The town of just over 600 residents was evacuated Thursday just ahead of roaring fires, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery Complex, which breeds salmon.

“This a rough one, this sequence of fires,” said Robbie Johnson, a public information officer with the Idaho Department of Lands. “We’re using everything we’ve got — when you have those additional fire starts in an area, you have to say, ‘this needs aircraft over here, and over here,’ and make those rough decisions about the attack. We’ve got really smart people working on that.”

There’s no estimate yet on the number of buildings burned in Idaho, nor is there information about damage to urban communities, Johnson said Friday morning.

Elsewhere in California, about 1,000 people were displaced Thursday by the lightning-sparked Gold Complex fires, which burned nearly 5 square miles (12 square kilometers) of brush and timber in the Plumas National Forest in California, near the Nevada line and about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Reno. Some evacuations were lifted Friday, when the fire was at 11% containment.

And in inland Southern California, firefighters battled a small fire that erupted Thursday afternoon in hills just above the Riverside County city of Lake Elsinore. The Macy Fire was 15% contained early Friday, with one unspecified structure destroyed. In rural northern San Diego County, containment of the 3-day-old Grove Fire jumped to 25% after a day of minimal growth.

The National Interagency Fire Center said more than 27,000 fires have burned more than 5,800 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) in the U.S. this year, and in Canada, more than 8,000 square miles (22,800 square kilometers) have burned in more than 3,700 fires so far, according to its National Wildland Fire Situation Report issued Wednesday.

Associated Press writers Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Terry Chea, Scott Sonner, Martha Bellisle and Amy Hanson contributed to this report.

Originally Published: July 26, 2024 at 10:44 a.m.