Fires of historic proportions.
Fueled by drought and strong winds, fires of rare intensity continued to ravage the west coast of the United States on Wednesday, September 9, and killed six people including a one-year-old child.
The child, found by rescue teams with his parents severely burned, perished in Washington state, the Okanogan County Sheriff's Office said.
All three were trying to escape the flames.
"Go through hell"
The fires stretch from Washington State, on the border with Canada, to San Diego, in southern California.
Between the two, Oregon has seen 120,000 hectares go up in smoke and at least five communities have been largely destroyed by fires "unprecedented in the history of the state", said its governor, Kate Brown.
The authorities expect "many losses, in terms of buildings and human lives" while massive evacuations are underway, she added at a press conference.
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Impressive footage of California fire around Shaver lake pic.twitter.com/imKw9XE9Ys
- 🏛CasusBelli🏛 (@CasusBellii) September 6, 2020
Two people were found dead in the state, the sheriff of Marion County in northwestern Oregon later announced.
According to local media, it is a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother.
Jody Evans, a resident of the small town of Detroit, said she felt like she was "going through hell" while fleeing the flames that threatened her house.
"The fire on both sides of the road, the fallen trees, the wind blowing, the ash flying," she told local Newschannel 21.
Carried by the wind, the fumes spread towards the coast and covered entire regions with haze.
Nearly a thousand firefighters mobilized
In California, more than 20 fires are raging and this year the fire has consumed more than 10,000 km2 in the state, a record since these data were recorded in 1987.
Three people were found dead in the upstate, Butte County authorities said.
In San Francisco, residents woke up to a dark orange sky worthy of an apocalypse scene because of smoke from the fires further north.
At midday, the cars were still driving headlights on as if the sun had still not risen.
Nearly a thousand firefighters were fighting the fire known as Creek Fire in the central Fresno region, which spread over more than 65,000 hectares.
Thick columns of smoke rose from the Sierra National Forest as helicopters crisscrossed the area, an AFP reporter found on site near Shaver Lake.
Many roads were blocked by police, and firefighters were showing tired faces.
In front of a landscape of charred trees, a completely destroyed house had only its brick fireplace still standing, and revealed the skeleton of a completely burnt washing machine.
Further south, near Los Angeles, the Bobcat Fire devastated more than 4,500 acres and was still out of control, county firefighters said.
Evacuation orders have also been issued for the threatened population near San Diego, where nearly 7,000 acres have burned in the Valley Fire, according to local authorities.
"This is no longer the Washington before"
Washington State Governor Jay Inslee said on Tuesday that nine "large" fires burned more than 133,000 hectares there in 24 hours, more than double the area burned for all of 2019.
"We live in a new world, it is no longer the Washington of before," he said, denouncing climate change which is the source, according to him, of these fires of a new magnitude.
"The conditions are so dry, so hot, so windy, because the climate has changed," said the governor, adding that more than 100,000 people were without electricity.
The small town of Malden was almost completely destroyed.
The fire station, post office and town hall "have completely burned down," Sheriff Brett Myers said in a statement.
"There are no words to describe the extent of the damage," Myers added.
"The fire is going to be put out, but a whole community is transformed forever."
The easterly wind pushed the fumes toward the Seattle area, the state's largest city, where an air pollution alert was issued by the local Department of Ecology.
California Democratic Governor Gary Newsom also denounced the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
"I am literally losing my patience with climate skeptics," he said.
"This point of view is in total contradiction with the reality on the ground".
With AFP
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