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Wildfires Live Updates: 500,000 Under Evacuation Orders in Oregon
The mayor of Portland declared a state of emergency as fires burned toward the city. California and Washington State are battling growing fires, too.
Right Now
The National Weather Service said a huge cloud of smoke would descend on Washington State today, creating unhealthy breathing conditions around the state.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Portland declares an emergency as fires burn into suburbs.
- ‘This is a fathomless loss’: Some searches for the missing end in tragedy.
- Climate change is a real and urgent threat in California.
- False rumors that activists set the fires are exasperating officials.
- States are in a desperate search for help battling the fires.
- Wildfire smoke is dangerous to your health. Here’s how to protect yourself.
Portland declares an emergency as fires burn into suburbs.
The wildfire crisis on the West Coast grew to a staggering scale on Friday, as huge fires merged and bore down on towns and suburbs, state leaders pleaded for firefighting help from neighbors, and hundreds of thousands of people were told to evacuate, including about one of every 10 Oregon residents.
Oregon, Washington State and California are enduring a wildfire season of historic proportions, with the firefighting effort compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and misinformation online. At least 15 people have died in the fires, with more expected as teams search through burned homes.
The fires have consumed more than three million acres in California, almost a million acres in Oregon and destroyed entire towns in Washington. The blazes have torn through idyllic mountain towns, reduced subdivisions to beams and embers, and spewed foul smoke-filled air across a region that is home to millions of people.
“We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state,” said Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, where the Beachie Creek and Riverside fires threatened to merge near Portland’s suburbs. Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland declared a state of emergency on Thursday night, and residents of Molalla, about 30 miles to the south, packed highways as they fled from the approaching fires.
So far, about 500,000 people in the state had been subject to evacuation orders, said Bobbi Doan, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Office of Emergency Management.
“Unfortunately, the weather system is not yet giving us a reprieve,” Ms. Brown said at a news conference Thursday, adding that the winds were “creating unpredictable movement of the fires.”
Satellite images of the West showed a coastline smothered in thick smoke, and residents woke up, again, to warnings of hazardous air, and, in some places, raining ash. The National Weather Service said a huge cloud of smoke would descend on Washington State on Friday, creating unhealthy breathing conditions around the state. “For Western Washington, it will get worse before it gets better,” the service said.
Heavy smoke was also predicted down the California coast, in many places mixing with fog and seriously reducing visibility, as dozens of fires burned throughout the state. Though firefighters have gained 20 percent containment over the North Complex fire, which has burned almost 250,000 acres east of Sacramento, the Creek Fire east of Fresno was still almost completely uncontrolled on Thursday night, burning more than 175,000 acres.
Gov. Gavin Newsom pleaded with residents to listen to evacuation orders, stressing the magnitude of the fire season. “Six of the 20 largest wildfires in California history have occurred in 2020,” he said on Twitter. “If you are asked to evacuate please do so immediately.”
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‘This is a fathomless loss’: Some searches for the missing end in tragedy.
As the blazes rage across California, Oregon and Washington, family and friends are desperately searched for missing loved ones who remained unaccounted for.
Zygy Roe-Zurz, whose family lives in Berry Creek, Calif., said he had been waiting for days for news from his mother, his aunt and his uncle. On Thursday, he learned that his aunt was killed as the Bear Fire ripped through the community, and that his mother remained missing. Authorities told the family that Mr. Roe-Zurz’s uncle was likely dead as well, he said.
“I feel barren — this is a fathomless loss and I will never be the same,” said Mr. Roe-Zurz, 37, who is in Arkansas and last spoke to his mother on Tuesday night, before the flames intensified. “This cruel fire took everything.”
He said that his family members staying at the property in Berry Creek had been under the impression that the fire was getting under control, but that the situation changed dramatically as the Bear Fire jumped an astonishing 230,000 acres overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.
“It’s pretty much a nightmare scenario,” Mr. Roe-Zurz said. “I’m devastated.”
There was better news for other families who found out that loved ones they believed to be missing were found safe on Thursday.
Katy Carmel said her daughter, Natalie Anderson, had been on a camping trip with her boyfriend near the McKenzie Bridge east of Eugene, Ore. But when the Holiday Farm Fire broke out on Monday evening, Ms. Carmel could no longer reach Ms. Anderson.
Ms. Carmel could not sleep, fearing the worst. Days passed and the anxiety built. On Thursday, authorities notified the families that both Ms. Anderson and her boyfriend, Enmanuel Rodriguez, were safe and evacuated.
Ms. Carmel said she was relieved to hear the news, but added, “I’ll be better once she’s actually home.”
Climate change is a real and urgent threat in California.
Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face.
The crisis in the nation’s most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other.
“You’re toppling dominoes in ways that Americans haven’t imagined,” said Roy Wright, who directed resilience programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2018 and grew up in Vacaville, Calif., near one of this year’s largest fires. “It’s apocalyptic.”
The same could be said for the entire West Coast this week, to Washington and Oregon, where towns were decimated by infernos as firefighters were stretched to their limits.
California’s simultaneous crises illustrate how the ripple effect works. A scorching summer led to dry conditions never before experienced. That aridity helped make the season’s wildfires the biggest ever recorded. Six of the 20 largest wildfires in modern California history have occurred this year.
If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians. The intensely hot wildfires are not only chasing thousands of people from their homes but causing dangerous chemicals to leach into drinking water. Excessive heat warnings and suffocating smoky air have threatened the health of people already struggling during the pandemic. And the threat of more wildfires has led insurance companies to cancel homeowner policies and the state’s main utility to shut off power to tens of thousands of people pre-emptively.
False rumors that activists set the fires are exasperating officials.
Officials dealing with the catastrophic fires on the West Coast have had to counter social media rumors that the blazes were set by antifascist activists, publicly pleading that people verify information before sharing it.
Despite their efforts, misinformation about the origin of the fires continues to spread on Facebook and Twitter.
Several law enforcement agencies in Oregon said they had been flooded with inquiries about rumors that activists were responsible. On Thursday, several journalists reporting on fires near the city of Molalla, Ore., said they had been confronted by a group of armed people who were worried about unverified reports of arsonists in the area.
The rumors appear to have started on Wednesday night, after the Portland Police Bureau warned people on Twitter about the risk of fire during demonstrations. But there is no evidence that activists have deliberately set fires.
“We’re not seeing any indications of a mass politically influenced arson campaign,” said Joy Krawczyk, a spokeswoman with the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Three law enforcement agencies in Oregon did announce on Thursday that the Almeda Fire, which incinerated neighborhoods and is linked to two deaths, may have been deliberately set. No suspects were publicly identified, but the Ashland police chief told The Oregonian that no information pointed toward the loose collective of antifascist activists known as antifa.
“One thing I can say is that the rumor it was set by Antifa is 100% false information,” Chief Tighe O’Meara told the newspaper in an email.
Liz Bourgeois, a Facebook spokeswoman, said Friday morning that the company’s third-party fact-checkers determined the rumors that antifa and Black Lives Matter activists had started the fires was false. “We are reducing its distribution and showing strong warning labels for people who see it, try to share it, or already have,” Ms. Bourgeois said in a statement.
States are in a desperate search for help battling the fires.
As wildfires began consuming communities across Oregon this week, leaders at the state emergency management office fired off an email to counterparts around the country, pleading for 10 firefighting strike teams that could bring 50 extra engines to the region.
The state got one commitment: Utah would send a team with five engines.
Facing a historic year of wildfire destruction across the West Coast, including more than three million acres consumed in California, the national emergency systems that rely on state-to-state assistance have been buckling under the strain. That has left emergency responders struggling to keep pace with fires that have destroyed entire towns and led to at least 15 deaths, with seven more people found dead on Thursday from a fire north of Sacramento.
“I don’t know that we have any fires where we can say we have got enough resources to do what we need to do,” Andrew Phelps, the director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, said.
Fires continued to rage in southern Oregon, where hundreds of homes have been razed, as well as east of Salem, where two bodies have been found, and along the state’s coast. More than 900,000 acres have burned, nearly double a typical season. Hundreds of thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate, including parts of the Portland suburbs, where fires were still on the move.
In California, firefighters continued to battle the blazes of a remarkable wildfire season, including the August Complex burning in the Mendocino National Forest that is now the largest fire in the state’s recorded history.
In Washington, hundreds of homes and other structures were at risk of wildfires that continued to burn, even as a deadly stretch of dry winds from the East began to ease. Hilary Franz, the state’s commissioner of public lands, said the state was searching for help from elsewhere in the country.
So many state aid requests have gone to the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group, which helps direct wildfire resources, that the group has been left to decide which ones get priority. Dan Smith, a member of the group who is also fire director for the National Association of State Foresters, said that as of Thursday morning there were over 300 requests for support that could not be fulfilled.
Wildfire smoke is dangerous to your health. Here’s how to protect yourself.
Smoke from wildfires, which can include toxic substances from burned buildings, has been linked to serious health problems.
Studies have shown that when waves of smoke hit the rate of hospital visits rises and many of the additional patients experience respiratory problems, heart attacks and strokes.
The health effects of wildfire smoke don’t go away when skies clear. A recent study on Montana residents suggested a long tail for wildfire smoke exposure.
Erin Landguth, an associate professor in the school of public and community health science at the University of Montana and the lead author on the study, said research had shown that “after bad fire seasons, one would expect to see three to five times worse flu seasons” months later.
If you can’t leave an area that has high levels of smoke, the C.D.C. recommends limiting exposure by staying indoors with windows and doors closed and running air-conditioners in recirculation mode so that outside air isn’t drawn into your home.
Portable air purifiers are also recommended, though, like air-conditioners, they require electricity. If utilities cut off power, as has happened in California, those options are limited.
If you do have power, avoid frying food, which can increase indoor smoke.
Experts say it is especially important to avoid cigarettes. They also recommend avoiding strenuous outdoor activities when the air is bad. When outside, well-fitted N95 masks are also recommended, though they are in short supply because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some other masks, particularly tightly woven ones made of different layers of fabric, can provide “pretty good filtration,” if they are fitted closely to the face, said Sarah Henderson, senior scientist in environmental health services at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control.
Reporting was contributed by Davey Alba, Tim Arango, Mike Baker, Kate Conger, Christopher Flavelle, Thomas Fuller, Jack Healy, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, John Schwartz and Alan Yuhas
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