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Cooler weather helps firefighters battle blaze that has devastated an area the size of Los Angeles

Cooler weather helps firefighters battle blaze that has devastated an area the size of Los Angeles

By NIC COURY, EUGENE GARCIA and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ – Associated Press

FOREST RANCH, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of firefighters battling a Northern California wildfire got help from the weather, hours after the blaze grew so large it burned an area larger than Los Angeles. The fire was one of many that have raged across the western United States and Canada, fanned by wind and heat.

Cooler temperatures and higher humidity could help slow the Park Fire, California’s largest this year. Its intensity and dramatic spread have led firefighters to draw unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which raged out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and burning down 11,000 homes.

Paradise was back in the danger zone on Saturday. The entire town was under an evacuation warning, one of several communities in Butte County. Evacuation orders were also issued in Plumas, Tehama and Shasta Counties. An evacuation warning asks people to prepare to leave and await instructions, while an evacuation order means they must leave immediately.

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Temperatures are expected to remain below average through the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean existing fires are going to go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

As of Saturday, the Park Fire had burned 547 square miles (1,416 square kilometers) and destroyed 134 structures since it broke out Wednesday, when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a ravine in Chico and then fled. The fire was 10% contained and was moving north and east near Chico.

Nearly 2,500 firefighters battled the blaze, assisted by 16 helicopters and numerous fire-fighting aircraft.

Cal Fire Operations Chief Jeremy Pierce said firefighters took advantage of the cooler weather while it lasted: “We had a lot of success today.”

Susan Singleton and her husband packed their SUV with clothes, some food and their seven dogs and rushed to evacuate their home this week in Cohasset, a town of about 400 northeast of Chico. They have since learned that their home has burned down.

“Everything we had burned, but getting them out, getting us out, was my priority,” Singleton said Saturday, standing outside her SUV as her dogs rested. They’ve all been sleeping in the car outside a Red Cross shelter at a church that doesn’t allow animals, and Singleton, 59, said the next thing is to find a place for her pets to stretch out.

“We need to have a place where we can land and stop doing this because this is what stresses me out,” she said.

More than 110 active fires were burning across the U.S. on Friday, covering 2,800 square miles (7,250 square kilometers), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In Southern California, a fire in the Sequoia National Forest tore through the community of Havilah after burning more than 48 square miles (124 square kilometers) in less than three days. The town of 250 residents was under evacuation orders.

Crews also made progress on a complex of fires in the Plumas National Forest near the California-Nevada border, Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman said. Traffic was backed up for miles at the border along the main road connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The most damage so far has been inflicted on Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. 25,000 people were displaced and the park of the same name, a World Heritage Site, was destroyed: 358 of the 1,113 buildings in the town were destroyed.

Firefighters stopped the progress of a blaze near Tyler on Friday night in eastern Washington, destroying three homes and five outbuildings, the Washington Department of Natural Resources reported.

Two fires in eastern Oregon, the Durkee and Cow Valley fires, have burned about 660 square miles (1,709 square kilometers).

And in Idaho, homes, outbuildings and a commercial building were among the structures lost in several communities, including Juliaetta, which was evacuated Thursday. The cluster of fires known as the Gwen Fire was estimated at 41 square miles (106 square kilometers) in size without any containment.

Garcia reported from Chico, Calif., and Rodriguez from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer, John Antczak, Rio Yamat, David Sharp, Holly Ramer, Sarah Brumfield, Claire Rush, Terry Chea, Scott Sonner, Martha Bellisle and Amy Hanson contributed.

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