Oregon wildfire displaces 2,000 residents as blazes flare across US West

Hand crews backed by water-dropping helicopters struggled on Thursday to suppress a huge wildfire that displaced roughly 2,000 residents in southern Oregon, the largest among dozens of blazes raging across the drought-stricken US West.

The Bootleg fire has charred more than 227,000 acres (91,860 hectares) of desiccated timber and brush in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest since erupting on July 6 about 250 miles (400 km) south of Portland.

That total was up 12,000 acres from Wednesday's tally. Firefighters extended containment lines carved around the blaze to 7% of its perimeter from 5% a day earlier, but were far from gaining the upper hand.

"This is going to continue to grow – the extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor," Incident Commander Joe Hessel said on Twitter.

More than 1,700 firefighters and a dozen helicopters were assigned to the blaze, as the demand for personnel and equipment across the Pacific Northwest reached levels that have begun to strain available resources, said Jim Gersbach, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

"It's uncommon for us to reach this level of demand on firefighting resources this early" in the season, he said.

Firefighter Garrett Souza, a resident of the nearby town of Chiloquin, said Wednesday he and his team spent 39 hours straight on the "initial attack" of the fire last week.

"It's the cumulative fatigue that really, I think, wears a person out over time," he told Reuters, as he took a break from hacking at hotspots in the burn area.

No serious injuries have been linked to the Bootleg fire, officials said, but it has destroyed at least 21 homes and 54 other structures, and forced an estimated 2,000 people from several hundred dwellings placed under evacuation. Many have taken refuge in a Red Cross evacuation center at the Klamath Falls fairgrounds. Nearly 2,000 homes were threatened.

Largest of many wildfires

The Bootleg ranks as the largest by far of 70 major active wildfires listed on Thursday as having blackened nearly 1 million acres in 11 states, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported. It is also the sixth-largest on record in Oregon since 1900, according to state forestry figures.

Other states hard hit by the latest spate of wildfires include California, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

As of Wednesday, the center in Boise put its "national wildland fire preparedness level" at 5, the highest of its five-tier scale, meaning most US firefighting resources are currently deployed somewhere across the country.

The situation represents an unusually active start to the annual fire season, coming amid extremely dry conditions and record-breaking heat that has baked much of the West in recent weeks.

Scientists have said the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires are largely attributable to prolonged drought that is symptomatic of climate change.

One newly ignited blaze drawing attention on Thursday was the Dixie fire, which erupted on Wednesday in Butte County, California, near the mountain town of Paradise, devastated by a 2018 firestorm that killed 85 civilians and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures in the state's deadliest wildfire disaster.

The Dixie fire has charred about 2,250 acres (910 hectares) in its first 24 hours as some 500 personnel battled the blaze, which was spreading across a steep, rocky tree-filled terrain about 85 miles (140 km) north of Sacramento.

Erik Wegner of the US Forest Service said dense stands of dead and dying trees created highly combustible conditions for the blaze. "It took off really fast," he told Reuters.

The local sheriff's office warned residents in and around the tiny community of Pulga to stand by for evacuations.

(Source: Reuters)

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