‘We have never seen this’: 10% of Oregon forced to evacuate; death toll rises from wildfires across Western states – USA TODAY

More than 500,000 people in Oregon have been forced to evacuate because of wildfires – over 10% of the state’s population – as the blazes continued to race through more than a dozen Western states Friday.

At least 17 people have died and hundreds of homes have been destroyed by more than 100 major fires that have consumed an area nearly the size of New Jersey. At least 12 deaths have been reported in California, four in Oregon and one in Washington state.

Nearly 28,000 firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires across the West, and evacuation orders are in place for residents near 42 large fires, the National Interagency Fire Center said Friday.

At least 17 have died in California, Oregon and Washington state

At least 10 people have died in fires in northern California, including seven more added to the death toll Thursday, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. One of the dead was Josiah Williams, a 16-year-old boy. Two others died in a fire on the border with Oregon, according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office.

In that state, two people died in a fire east of Salem, Oregon, Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast confirmed Wednesday. Further south, two people were killed in the Almeda Fire, which is under criminal investigation.

In northeastern Washington, a 1-year-old boy died after his family was apparently overrun by flames while trying to flee a wildfire, Okanogan County Sheriff Tony Hawley said.

‘Don’t come back until you find him’:The harrowing story of a father’s desperate attempt to save his son in the Oregon wildfire

Dozens of fires burning in Oregon, responders ‘inundated’ with calls

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said hundreds of residences have been destroyed. She said emergency responders were “inundated” and urged residents not to call 911 to report smoke or ash clouds. Evacuees poured into the state fairgrounds in the capital city of Salem, many bringing their animals.

“We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state,” Brown wrote on Twitter late Thursday. “Currently there are fires burning more than 900,000 acres. To put that into perspective, over the last 10 years, an average of 500,000 acres burn in an entire year. We’ve seen nearly double that in 3 days.”

The Oregon Office of Emergency Management said 39 wildfires were burning in the state by Thursday morning, a number that shocked officials.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency order Thursday evening, due to the threat of wildfires to the Portland Metro Area. Nearby, the entire inmate population of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility was being evacuated to another prison “out of an abundance of caution,” prison officials said.

The Backstory: Covering the record-setting wildfires that have wracked Western states

As evacuees fled to hotels, reports of price gouging began to circulate. Brown issued an executive order Thursday declaring an abnormal market disruption, which allows the Attorney General and Oregon Department of Justice to investigate businesses where price gouging is reported.

“During a statewide emergency, it is absolutely unacceptable to price gouge Oregonians who have already been hard hit and are facing devastating loss,” Brown said in a statement.

Hundreds of those who’ve been displaced in Southern Oregon walked past road closures on Thursday to try to find out what was left of their homes. In many cases, all that remained was gray ash and rubble — twisted metal bedframes, melted televisions, broken glass, burned out vehicles and here and there a few trinkets and keepsakes.

Wildfires burned millions of acres:See what that looks like.

California continues to battle 29 major wildfires

In California, which has already endured three of the top four largest wildfires in its history this year, 14,000 firefighters remain on the line of 29 major wildfires.

In Northern California, dozens are missing and hundreds of homes were feared destroyed by a series of blazes 125 miles northeast of San Francisco called the North Complex fires, which has been burning since a lightning storm ignited multiple fires on Aug. 17. At least 20,000 people were under evacuation orders or warnings in Plumas, Yuba and Butte counties.

The fourth-largest active fire in the state – the Creek Fire in Central California – was just 6% contained late Thursday, according to Cal Fire. As the fire ripped through thousands of acres of forest and destroyed homes earlier this week, it also produced two fire tornadoes that forced airliners to detour around them.

California is on fire:What are fire whirls, fire tornadoes, fire clouds and dry lightning?

In Southern California, fires burned in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. The El Dorado Fire, which has burned more than 20 square miles in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, was listed as 31% contained as of late Thursday. More than 1,200 firefighters were on the scene, Cal Fire said.

Since January, wildfires have burned almost 5,000 square miles in California and more than 6,300 structures have been damaged or destroyed, according to Cal Fire.

At least seven weeks remain in the prime fire season, and conditions may be exacerbated by the La Niña climate pattern – a natural cycle marked by cooler-than-average ocean water in the central Pacific Ocean – that tends to bring dry weather across portions of California and much of the Southwest.

“We’re already in a bad position, and La Niña puts us in a situation where fire-weather conditions persist into November and possibly even December,” Ryan Truchelut, president of Weather Tiger LLC, told Bloomberg News. “It is exacerbating existing heat and drought issues.”

More:Apocalyptic photos and video show an orange sky over San Francisco, other cities as wildfires burn across Western states

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/11/wildfire-updates-oregon-evacuations-california-deaths/3467271001/

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‘We have never seen this’: 10% of Oregon forced to evacuate; death toll rises from wildfires across Western states – USA TODAY

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