On Thursday, with the support of Waterdrop Helicopters, the staff worked hard to suppress a huge Wildfire Displaced approximately 2,000 residents in the south OregonThis is the largest of the dozens of fires that have swept through the drought in the western United States.
Since it erupted about 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Portland on July 6, the Bootleg fire has scorched more than 227,000 acres (91,860 hectares) of dry wood and is in the Fremont-Vinema National Forest Brush it around and around.
This total exceeds the land area of New York City and is 12,000 acres higher than Wednesday’s figure. The strike team drew a line of control at about 7% of the fire perimeter, up from 5% a day earlier, but accident commander Joe Hessel said that the fire will continue to expand. “Extremely dry vegetation and weather are not good for us,” Hessel said on Twitter.
Jim Gersbach, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said that more than 1,700 firefighters and a dozen helicopters were assigned to the fire, and the demand for personnel and equipment in the Pacific Northwest began to strain available resources.
“It is not common for us to reach this level of demand for firefighting resources so early in the season,” he said.
Garrett Souza, a 42-year-old firefighter who lives in the nearby town of Chiloquin, said on Wednesday that he and his team spent 39 consecutive hours in the “initial attack” of the fire last week.
“I think that over time, the accumulated fatigue can really exhaust a person,” he told Reuters, as he took a break while hacking in a hot spot in the burn area.
Officials said the Bootleg fire did not cause serious injuries, but it destroyed at least 21 houses and 54 other buildings, and forced the evacuation of approximately 2,000 people in hundreds of homes. Nearly 2,000 houses were threatened.
The biggest of many wildfires
According to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, of the 70 major active wildfires listed on Thursday, Bootleg is by far the largest, affecting nearly 1 million acres in 11 states. According to state forestry data, this is also the sixth largest record in Oregon since 1900.
Other states that have been hit by the latest spate of wildfires include California, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska.
As of Wednesday, the Boise Center has set its “National Wildfire Readiness Level” as 5, which is the highest level of its five-level scale, which means that most of the U.S. firefighting resources are currently deployed across the country.
This situation means that the annual fire season has started to be extremely busy. In recent weeks, most areas in the west have been in extremely dry weather and record-breaking high temperatures.
Scientists say that the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires are mainly due to prolonged droughts that are a sign of climate change.
A newly lit fire that caught people’s attention on Thursday was the Dixie Fire, which broke out on Wednesday in Butte County, near Mountain Paradise, California, and is still being rebuilt from a fire in 2018, the most deadly in the state In the wildfires, 85 people were killed and nearly 19,000 buildings were destroyed. disaster.
The Dixie fire scorched about 2,250 acres (910 hectares) in the first 24 hours. About 500 people fought the fire. The fire spread to a steep, rocky area about 85 miles (140 kilometers) north of Sacramento. On forested terrain.
According to Erik Wegner of the U.S. Forest Service, dense dead and dying trees created highly flammable conditions for the fire. “It took off very fast,” he told Reuters.
The authorities have issued evacuation orders and warnings to several small communities in the area.
In Washington State, firefighters have controlled about 20% of lightning-caused fires near Nespelem. Since Monday, the fire has burned nearly 23,000 acres (9,270 hectares) northeast of Seattle, mainly in tribes on the Colville Reservation On the land.
Officials said no one was injured, but the fire killed some livestock, destroyed three houses, and forced several others to evacuate.
(Reporting by Deborah Bloom in Klamath Falls, Oregon; supplementary reporting by David Ryder in Nespelem, Washington and Mathieu Lewis Rolland in Butte County, California; writing and supplementary reporting by Peter Szekely and Steve Gorman; David Gregorio, Daniel Wallis, and Chris · Reese)
