“If you don’t leave, you’re dead,” sheriff’s deputies and state soldiers warn as the “Bootleg” fire invades.
A growing forest fire in a dry forest of bones in the western United States has forced hundreds of people to leave their homes, as it burned more than 854 square kilometers (330 square kilometers) and showed no signs of slowing down. on Wednesday amid a nice wave of heat and drought.
The so-called “Bootleg” fire, which has spread through the Fremont-Winema National Forest about 400 km (250 miles) south of Portland, Oregon, destroyed 21 homes and threatened 1,926 more, according to a coordination center. interagency of the state of Oregon and Washington in Portland.
After burning for eight days, the fire left thick fog over the nearby waterfalls of Klamath, a picturesque town about 40 km north of the California border, where the local fairgrounds became an evacuation center. the Red Cross.
Tim McCarley, one of the evacuees, told Reuters news agency earlier this week that sheriff’s deputies and state soldiers showed up at his home just as “sparks and embers were coming down” and said to his family “if he doesn’t leave, he’s dead.”
“This is my first gunpowder and I’ll tell you it’s scary,” said another evacuated resident, Sarah Kose.
“You don’t know if you’ll be the one to lose your house, or if you’re there and watching your neighbor lose his house and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The Bootleg Fire is the site of several wildfires in the western United States, where a record drought and heat wave have left rubbish and wood highly flammable.
Climate change has made the American West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years and will continue to make the climate more extreme and forest fires more frequent and destructive. The heat and dry climate of Canada in Mexico are of drainage reservoirs, threatening crops and livestock and foreshadowing a potential future water crisis, experts said.
In total, 60 big fires they have consumed more than 404,680 acres (one million acres) in 12 U.S. states this season, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, a firefighting group that combines eight U.S. agencies.
Fierce forest fires in the Pacific Northwest they threaten Native American lands where tribes are already struggling to conserve water and preserve traditional hunting grounds.
In central northern Washington, hundreds of people in the town of Nespelem, in the tribal land of Colville, were ordered to leave because of an “imminent and life-threatening” danger, as the largest of five fires caused by dozens of lightning strikes on July 12 were eroded by grass, sagebrush and wood.
Seven homes burned and the entire city was safely evacuated before the fire arrived, said Andrew Joseph Jr., president of the Confederate tribes of the Colville Reserve, which includes more than 9,000 descendants of a dozen tribes.
Earlier this week, flames burning along a high-voltage power supply corridor connecting Oregon’s power grid to California reduced power supplies, causing the California power grid management agency issues electricity conservation alerts.
Last year, late-summer forest fires, fueled by high winds and dry, hot terrain, killed more than three dozen people and burned more than 4.1 million hectares (10.2 million). acres) in California, Oregon and Washington.
