The Park Fire off Upper Park Road in Upper Bidwell Park east of Chico is at 3 percent containment this evening, according to CAL FIRE, and is being run by CAL FIRE IMT 3 in unified command with the Lassen National Forest. Though the cause was earlier reported as under investigation, the Chico ER reported later today that investigators had arrested a Chico man suspected of igniting the fire.
07/26 FRI a.m. Park Fire burns to 164,286 acres, over 4,000 evacuated
The burned-out car that CAL FIRE investigators traced to the start of the Park Fire in Chico. The suspect is in the Butte County Jail. ~ Butte County District Attorney’s Office photo.
The 42-year-old suspect is facing arson charges. Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said Thursday that investigators apprehended Ronnie Dean Stout, a twice-convicted felon and registered sex offender.
Investigators followed up on local reports of a man pushing “a car on fire” into a gully and down a 60-foot drop near Alligator Hole in upper Bidwell Park midafternoon on Wednesday. Ramsey said the guy was seen calmly leaving the area as the fire took off.
The fire spread from the car, which Ramsey said was Stout’s mother’s car, and grew 45,000 acres overnight; it was estimated Thursday afternoon at 75,000 acres.
It’s at 125,000 acres tonight burning in both Butte and Tehama counties; numerous firefighting airtankers from throughout the state are flying as conditions allow, along with over 1,100 personnel assigned, 6 helicopters, 41 dozers and 10 watertenders, 40 crews, and 153 engines.
A fire whirl was spotted at the Park Fire in the early evening hours of July 25, 2024. ~ AlertCalifornia Platte Mountain camera in Butte County Click photo to watch video
A fire tornado ore fire vortex developed from the intensity of the fire on July 25. The time-lapse was captured by the ALERTCalifornia Platte Mtn 1 camera. The camera sensors can see 60-70 miles on a clear day and more than 120 miles on a clear night. Watch ALERTCalifornia’s more than 1,080 (as of July 2024) monitoring cameras live at cameras.alertcalifornia.org
The Park Fire was started at 3:00 p.m. yesterday and by 8:00 p.m. the IC had requested 30 strike teams of any type engines. (Holy immediate need Batman, 150 engines!)
PARK FIRE: View from Hamilton City about 7 p.m. July 25
CAL FIRE said the fire displayed dynamic fire activity overnight. Winds are definitely a factor and the temperatures are in the 80s. Three helicopters were available for night ops, and they spent the night finding hotspots to drop water on. CAL FIRE has a dandy photo collection on flickr, including timelapse images of the smoke at the fire’s origin.
Richardson Springs camera yesterday at 8 p.m.
~ Gracias and a big tip o’the hardhat to Pat for this …
The British Columbia Wildfire Service recently welcomed a group of 60 IMT members and specialized personnel from Australia and New Zealand to assist throughout the province. Another 30 went to Alberta.
The firefighters arrived in Canada as part of a years-long partnership through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC).
“The relationship between the B.C. Wildfire Service and Australia is longstanding, extending more than 15 years of mutual aid, support, and knowledge transfer,” they said. “The first instances of support started during the 2007 wildfire season in Australia, when B.C. assisted by sending more than 60 personnel to support fire suppression efforts.”
Staff from Australia and New Zealand in B.C. before traveling to their initial Canadian assignments. ~BC Wildfire Service
CIFFC is a not-for-profit group operated by Canadian wildland fire management partners and shares resources and mutual aid throughout the nation and internationally using the Canadian Interagency Mutual Aid Resource Sharing (MARS) Agreement — and the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council during wildfire seasons. CIFFC has a similar agreement with the U.S.
During the catastrophic 2021 season in British Columbia, the B.C. Wildfire Service was able to rely on these arrangements to request support from other Canadian provinces, the federal government, Mexico and Australia. CIFFC supports this coordination of resources.
Fire officials attribute the strong relationship between the nations to a shared understanding of how to approach emergency management.
“The agencies operate similarly in terms of warning systems, collaboration, and information sharing. We share a lot in common when it comes to fire behavior as well. Large bushfires and wildfires that can cause significant impact to close-by communities and property, hot dry and windy conditions, and fires with ability to grow quickly are not uncommon for the two nations.”
Nine of the 90 total firefighters came from the South Australian Country Fire Service (CFS), according to the South Australian government; the deployment could last up to 40 days.
“I feel humbled and honored to have this opportunity to travel to Canada to support their firefighters in a time of need and to deploy the skills I have learned over the years and to learn some new ones,” CFS Divisional Commander Phil Tapscott said. “These opportunities always reaffirm that what we do here in the CFS is of a very high quality.”
Around 883 wildfires have burned in British Columbia since the beginning of the year, according to the BC Wildfire Service list. Of those, 349 are still burning and 211 are considered out of control; 16 evacuation orders in 2024 have been issued.
Alberta has recorded 927 wildfires this year, 161 of which are labeled “active” and 53 of which are “out of control,” according to the province’s wildfire status dashboard.
Briefing on working in B.C., topics from radio communications to safety around wildlife. ~BC Wildfire Service
Wildfires in Arizona are burning near the town of Kearny, about 90 miles southeast of Phoenix.
The Romero Fire is estimated at 3,500 acres, spreading west and north through grass and brush. It’s 13 miles southwest of Kearny and 22 miles northwest of Mammoth, according to the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management. There is as of Saturday afternoon zero containment.
Romero Fire, Arizona, east of Casa Grande
azcentral.com reported that another fire, the Circle Fire, has burned about 200 acres at the base of Antelope Peak southeast of Kearny. The fires are just north of the Freeman Fire, which burned 32,568 acres.
The Southwest Coordination Center (SWCC) reports that scattered to numerous wetting thunderstorms are predicted for the Mogollon Rim and parts of eastern Arizona. The region reported 17 new fires on July 19, with 1,517 recorded so far for 192,579 acres thus far in 2024.
Multiple wildfires across Russia have caused officials to issue multiple states of emergency and evacuate thousands, while government officials are accused of largely ignoring the problem.
The latest state of emergency was issued by Novorossiysk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko on July 14, according to the Kyiv Independent. The city in southern Russia was forced to evacuate around 500 people from the fire that burned at least 153 acres as of July 15. More than 300 people, including workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry, were fighting the fire.
Two other regions declared wildfire-driven states of emergency at the beginning of July, a Reuters article reported. The Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, declared a federal state of emergency for wildfires on July 1. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported more than 107 registered wildfires burned more than 331,000 hectares (~818,000 acres) in the region.
The governor of the remote Siberian region of Tuva made the declaration on the same day as Sakha after a wildfire burned around 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) driven by intense heat, strong winds, and dry thunderstorms.
“At the moment, 23 forest fires have been registered on the territory of the republic,” said Vladislav Khovalyg, head of the Tuva region. “Most of them are in inaccessible mountainous areas. July as a whole promises to be the most difficult month in terms of the fire situation, and we have to fight for every hectare of forest.”
Experts warned that the nation was unprepared for an alarming wildfire season. The Moscow Times reported that limited state capacity for fire prevention and control, along with ongoing dry grass burning practices, worried experts of the potential for the season to turn into an annual crisis.
The “official indifference” was seen in real-time during the Siberia wildfires, which have burned an area the size of Normandy since the beginning of the year, French newspaper Le Monde reported. While the Russian government is preoccupied with its incursion into Ukraine, officials are neglecting necessary resources to fight wildfires burning throughout the nation.
“The problem is not just in the forest and its poor management,” an Irkutsk resident told Le Monde. “It’s largely in the heads of the people and the authorities, who don’t want to see it or fight it.”
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported more than 107 registered wildfires burned more than 331,000 hectares (~818,000 acres) in the region.
Russia’s wildfire problem is exacerbated by Earth’s changing climate. Recent research has shown wildfires will worsen in the coming years, even in areas where wildfires are currently rare, such as Russia’s alpine regions. Smoke from the worsening wildfires, e.g. in Siberia, is projected to cause thousands of deaths and billions in costs for East Asia.
The colors on the Russian Hydrometeorological Center’s map below represent the number of days of predicted “high” and “extreme” fire danger in April, according to the Moscow Times. The purple indicates less than one day, the yellow between one and three days, pink between four and six days, red between seven and nine days, and dark red over ten days.
A fire east of Québec in Newfoundland and Labrador has burned more than 24,000 acres and forced thousands to evacuate Labrador City. CNN reported that the “extremely aggressive inferno” was considered contained earlier this week, but weather changes on Friday blew the fire back to life and it spread rapidly. Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Andrew Furey said Saturday the fire had grown to 22,000 acres and had spread 13 miles in about four hours.
In a news conference on Sunday, Furey said weather conditions are favourable for firefighting. “We have some good news today. There is no significant growth in the size of the fire that is just northwest of Lab City,” he told reporters. The fire has burned through about 14,000 hectares (about 35,000 acres) to within four kilometres of the community — the same as Saturday.
Newfoundland and Labrador fires, ESRI map
Light rain, lower temperature and humidity, and northeast winds has kept the fire away from the town and burning onto itself.
Four water bombers are fighting on the eastern front of the fire. Six to eight are fighting on the western side from Quebec.
Around 9,500 people were evacuated from Labrador City, said Jeremy Reynolds with the provincial government. “A contingent of essential personnel have remained behind to oversee the emergency response,” he said.
The remoted town of Labrador City, in the northwestern part of the province, is about 900 miles north of Canada’s capital city of Ottawa.
A province-wide outdoor fire ban prohibiting setting of fires on forest land or within 300 metres of forest land is now in effect in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Significant firefighting resources are currently dedicated to wildfire suppression near the communities of Labrador West.
Updates on the location, status, and size of active fires can be viewed online at the NL Active Wildfire Dashboard.
Labrador City fires
Residents were told to evacuate to the Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay – a six-hour drive away.
A new wildfire near the small Malheur County town of Brogan grew quickly to over 20,000 acres by Thursday evening, prompting closure of a 23-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 26 in eastern Oregon and evacuation alerts, along with call-up of two state structural-protection task forces, authorities said.
It’s burning on private and public lands 9 miles east of Ironside, and by this afternoon it was pushing 75,000 acres.
The Cow Valley Fire burned to about 20,000 acres Thursday, on both sides of U.S. Highway 26
KTVB-TV reported that crews are battling two fires near U.S. Highway 26 in eastern Oregon. The Cow Valley Fire and the Bonita Road Fire both started early Thursday morning.
Others include the nearly 14,000-acre Larch Creek Fire south of The Dalles in Wasco County, which is still without any containment, and the nearly 4,000-acre Salt Creek Fire in Jackson County, about 16 percent contained.
The Larch Creek Fire grew from just 100 acres Tuesday afternoon, overnight and the next day, and by Wednesday night it was pushing 11,000 acres, according to the Oregon Department of Forestry. Zach Urness with the Statesman-Journal reported that the fire was at 13,816 acres Friday morning after more than 3,000 acres of growth overnight. The fire remains at zero percent containment, and Highway 216 east remains closed between milepost 1 and 4.
Thursday afternoon brought windy conditions to the area but fire behavior moderated overnight with lower temperatures and winds. Overnight crews worked closer to the active areas, building line and securing perimeters around Shadybrook Road and Highway 216.
“Today, air and ground crews will be active on all sides of the fire, building fire line, reinforcing existing line, and monitoring for hot spots. Structure protection will be focused on the community of Tygh Valley, Pine Hollow and Shadybrook subdivisions, and along Highway 216,
The Wasco County Sheriff’s Office has issued a Level 3 “Go Now!” evacuation order from Friend Road, East to Elliott Road and Highway 197, South to Badger Creek Road, West to McCorkle Grade Road.
Residents of at least 41 homes were advised to evacuate. Several other areas are under Level 2 and Level 1 evacuation orders.
Early afternoon Friday Vale District BLM said the Cow Valley Fire had burned over 73,720 acres. ODOT shared photos on TripCheck of the Cow Valley Fire yesterday.
KTVB in Boise reported 30-50 homes in Brogan are threatened, and power was shut down for customers at risk from powerlines close to the fire.
It was one of three large new area fires, along with the 4,500-acre Huntington Mutual Aid Fire in Baker County, which forced evacuations and alerts in the Huntington area and Farewell Bend State Park, and the 1,867-acre Bonita Road Fire, also in Malheur County, reported early Thursday morning.
The fire is moving toward Malheur Reservoir and is threatening 30 to 50 homes in the Brogan community. Malheur County Sheriff’s Office is advising residents to prepare for evacuation orders. At one point, 16 aircraft were assigned to the fire, dropping water and retardant, along with seven engines and four dozers plus crews from Vale and Burnt River RFPAs and Sand Hollow Fire District.
