Crews struggle to contain Oregon fire as blazes spread across US west

Smoke rises from a wildfire near La Pine, Oregon, on Tuesday. Photograph: Kyle Kalambach/AP

Gusty winds fueled a rapidly growing wildfire in central Oregon, the latest blaze to erupt in the US west as high temperatures envelop the region.

The fire broke out just outside the community of La Pine, in central Oregon, on Tuesday and rapidly grew to 2,415 acres (9.7 sq km) by Wednesday morning. Fire crews were able to get 30% containment on the blaze, officials reported on Wednesday, but winds continued to threaten progress.

Evacuation alerts were sent to more than 1,000 homes and businesses as a billowing plume of black and grey smoke loomed over local businesses. La Pine, located about 30 miles south of Bend, is a popular destination area best known for its microbreweries, hiking, river rafting and skiing on nearby Mount Bachelor.

Jodi Kerr, the owner of a home decor and gift store in La Pine, was packing up her store on Tuesday afternoon so she could evacuate. “It’s part of the risk of living in an area like this. It’s beautiful, but it’s wild,” said Kerr.

It was not clear whether any structures had burned, and the wildfire’s cause is still under investigation, authorities said.

The rapidly growing fire was one of several that kicked off in the US west in recent days and weeks amid rising summer temperatures. It is still early in the season of rising fire risks across the west, but a proliferation of grass seeded by a wet winter quickly dried as the weather warmed, leaving abundant fuel for fires.

These early season, fast-burning brush fires have consumed high amounts of acreage. With months left to go in what’s expected to be an active season across the region, the number of burned acres this year is already more than 40% higher than the 10-year average for this time of year.

In southern California, about 2,500 San Diego residents were under evacuation orders as fire crews used aircraft to attack a blaze that broke out on Tuesday afternoon in steep, rugged terrain near Torrey Pines state beach. Authorities closed two Interstate 5 off-ramps as winds pushed flames through about 20 acres (8 hectares) of dry brush at a nature preserve and toward homes. Firefighters reached 5% containment and stopped the fire’s forward progress, officials said around 5pm on Tuesday.

In northern California, improved weather conditions aided crews as they battled a fire that threatened the community of Palermo. The community of 9,400 people is located in Butte county, which has seen numerous catastrophic fires in recent years that have permanently altered the region, including the 2018 Camp fire that leveled the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

The fire near Palermo, which has been dubbed the Apache fire, was 25% contained on Tuesday evening, the California department of forestry and fire protection, or Cal Fire, said.

In central California, a new group of three large wildfires and several smaller ones covered nearly 11 sq miles (28 sq km) in rural eastern Fresno county, after lightning strikes from the remnants of a tropical storm struck the state on Monday.

“We had over a thousand lightning strikes to hit the county,” Dustin Hail, the Cal Fire unit chief, said at a briefing, adding that other fires that have not yet shown themselves could emerge over several days.

And in New Mexico, residents were still reeling from a harrowing week of fire and flood. Just days after a pair of fast-moving fires roared through the Mescalero Apache Reservation, leveling several communities, a tropical storm swirled north, unleashing downpours over landscapes that had just burned.

Such weather patterns aren’t unheard of in the south-west, but the climate crisis has supercharged extreme conditions, experts say. In all, more than 100 new fires – most of them small – were reported over the last seven days across Arizona and New Mexico.

Alaska has also seen a steep uptick in fire activity, prompting officials to request help from crews across the continental US. More than 100 fires were burning through remote dry landscapes this week – including the enormous 62,500-acre McDonald fire – with nine new fires starting on Tuesday alone.

With critical fire conditions lingering in the forecast, the dangers are only expected to mount.

“Lightning continues to be the harbinger of wildfires in Alaska with almost all of the recent starts attributed to this natural phenomenon,” officials with the BLM Alaska fire service wrote in an update on Tuesday. “With hotter weather and more lightning predicted, especially in interior Alaska, additional fires are likely to ignite.”

More on the recent fires in the US west: