As temperatures rose to about 106 degrees in Butte County just before 3 p.m. Wednesday, a man pushed a burning car down a ravine in Chico in what authorities said was an act of arson.
Within minutes, the flaming vehicle ignited tall grass that grew after a wet winter but has dried out in recent weeks. Soon live oaks and grapevines were burning, windswept embers cascading down the canyons and ridges of the Lassen foothills, catching new vegetation as they hit the ground.
By evening, the Park Fire had grown to 6,000 acres, and by the next morning it had grown sevenfold. As of Friday, the fire had grown to more than 178,090 acres, California’s largest fire so far this year, and was uncontained and showed few signs of slowing.
Experts say the explosive growth in fires is due to a perfect storm of hot, dry conditions, combustible vegetation and a landscape that hasn’t burned in decades. The remote terrain makes it difficult for rescuers to gain access to the perimeter of a growing fire, and firefights can be long and grueling as they struggle to gain a foothold.
“This is really the first fire in California in the last few years that I would call extraordinary, and that’s not a good thing,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said during the briefing. The fire was a big thing and it caused some pretty incredible things.”
In fact, the fires and their massive smoke have exhibited rare and erratic behavior, including “supercell thunderstorm signatures” filled with massive rotation, Swain said. Footage from a California wildfire alert camera on Thursday appeared to show fires spewing tornado-like swirls, sometimes called fire tornadoes or fire tornadoes.
“At this point, the fires are creating their own weather, and it can be quite unpredictable,” said Courtney Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Very large, explosive wildfires can trigger thunderstorms; They can create swirling plumes of fire that mimic tornadoes.
The park fire’s thunderstorm signature has yet to trigger lightning, but Carpenter said that’s still a possibility given its “explosive fire growth” and extreme behavior. She noted that smoke from the fires has reached Oregon.
Fortunately, so far, the fire has spread north and east—across northern Butte County and a growing portion of Tehama County—into a relatively remote mix of grass, brush, and timber, well away from Cote Threatened Communities of Hasset and Cohasset. But Swain said the fire will almost certainly be several times larger than it is now and could reach hundreds of thousands of acres before being contained.
“This fire will continue for weeks and possibly months,” he said. “This could be one of those fires that starts in mid-summer and continues into mid-fall … and could end up posing a greater threat to the community.”
The fire has carved a path of destruction. Garrett Sjolund, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Butte County division, said “many buildings” had burned, with 134 structures destroyed and another 4,000 structures threatened.
Experts said the fire started within the city limits of Chico and was driven away from the city center by dry southerly winds.
However, officials have been concerned about the Cohasset community, and they initially feared a repeat of the 2018 Camp Fire, which leveled the nearby community of Paradise and killed 85 people in the deadliest wildfire on record in California. During that fire, dozens of people were trapped on the area’s limited roads, trying to escape.
“Cohasset is particularly concerning to us because … there’s really only one way out, and that’s a narrow, windy road,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. “It’s difficult to get through here, so we want to get these warnings out as soon as possible.”
About 4,000 residents were evacuated in Cohasset, Forest Ranch, parts of northeast Chico and several rural areas in southern Tehama County.
Carpenter, a weather service meteorologist, said that while the dry winds that cause fire weather in the region typically come from the north, a less frequent wind this week is blowing in from the south and sucking up all the Bay Area moisture they normally carry. .
“It was very dry and very hot last month, which is why we’re seeing these critical fire conditions,” she said.
The area is under a red flag warning Thursday and Friday, signaling dangerous weather that could cause fires to spread quickly.
This pattern pushes flames into wilderness that has not been affected by fire for decades (or even longer), allowing it to mature into denser vegetation and dead brush that can easily ignite quickly.
“There’s a lot of live and dead fuel here,” said Dan Collins, spokesman for Cal Fire’s Butte division. He added that parts of the Ish Wilderness Area and Cohasset “have zero to very little documented fire history.”
Firefighting efforts are hampered by the region’s rugged terrain, with steep cliffs, vast canyons and few roads throughout the national forest.
“That’s one of the biggest challenges, is getting people [to the fire lines] Because of the remoteness,” Collins said.
This fire isn’t the only wildfire of concern in the West. Cal Fire is fighting more than 20 active fires across the state, while Canadian crews are fighting an 89,000-acre blaze in Alberta that has leveled parts of the historic resort town of Jasper . Experts say many of the fires are being sparked by the ongoing record-breaking heat wave that has been sweeping the West for weeks.
Chico-area residents are anxiously watching the progress of the Park Fire.
“This is a pretty unsettling time for us,” said Don Hankins, a professor of geography and planning at California State University, Chico and a member of the Butte County Fire Safety Commission.
Hankins said the Big Chico Creek Ecological Preserve, where he conducts much of his research, has burned, and cameras showed nearly all of the infrastructure had been destroyed, including an 1870s barn.
Hankins said that while this fire has some similarities to the Camp Fire, the Cohasset community has prepared for potential fires in recent years, including fuel reduction projects and prescribed burns to help clear the town. and some combustible materials between towns.
“But unfortunately, given the wind conditions and the size of these projects, that’s not necessarily going to be enough to have an impact if the fire continues to get out of control,” he said.
The fire is likely to grow in the coming days and weeks as crews contend with rugged volcanic terrain and continued hot and dry conditions.
“The outlook is that it won’t be easily contained,” Hankins said. “We still have a long season before the rainy season arrives and this is really the ultimate option to contain any fires that are happening across the West right now.”
Butte County Fire Chief Sherlund said he hopes the expected drop in temperatures and increased humidity this weekend will help put out the Park Fire and other fires in the area.
“As weather patterns change, it’s like a moving target,” he said. “This fire spread very, very quickly.”
