"We have never seen this amount of uncontrolled fires in our state.
At present, the fires have burned more than 900,000 (English) acres, "Oregon Governor Kate Brown wrote on Twitter.
This corresponds to around 364,000 hectares, compared with a normal fire season covering just over 200,000 hectares.
"We have now seen almost double in three days," Brown continues, saying that this is not a one-off event, but the devastating effects of climate change.
Two major fires risk merging
The windy weather has hampered firefighting, and two major fires - Beachie and Riverside - are feared to merge to create what is described as explosive fire activity, reports The Oregonian newspaper.
More than 80,000 people in Oregon have been evacuated.
Searching for burned out houses
Police are investigating whether the so-called Almeda fire, which started in the city of Ashland and which has destroyed hundreds of homes, may have been started.
Rescue workers have begun searching the burned-out houses and so far have found two bodies.
- We tried to get people out as fast as we could.
The risk is that there will be bodies in some of those houses.
The probability of much higher (death) numbers is significant, Ashland police chief Tighe O'Meara told Reuters.
Orange fog at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Wednesday, September 9th.
Photo: Frederic Larson via AP
Largest in California history
The fires in California are the largest ever to the surface, reports the Los Angeles Times.
It has burned and burns on more than 471,000 hectares, which can be compared with the fires of 2018 where 459,000 hectares were covered by fires.