The widespread fire in Oregon, the largest in the U.S., continues to grow, Reuters continues

By Deborah Bloom and Steve Gorman

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (Reuters) -A number of wildfires in southern Oregon, especially for a week, have forced firefighters to retreat for the fourth day in a row as it has spread to become the state’s fifth wildfire in more than a century. on Friday.

The Bootleg Fire, the largest of dozens of wildfires across the western windy landscape of the United States, has burned more than 241,000 acres – an area that far exceeds New York’s land mass.

Ironically, the heavy smoke that engulfs much of the region from the fires could have somewhat affected the effects of another heat wave expected this weekend by spreading to parts of the Rockies, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.

The bootleg fire has been burning amid drought-stricken wood and slag in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest since it fell near the Klamath waterfalls on July 6, 250 kilometers (400 km) south of Portland. They are investigating the cause.

The blaze destroyed at least 21 homes and 54 other structures, authorities said. On Friday, the Oregon Forestry Department threatened 5,000 more homes, about 3,000 more than a day.

That number means a greater number of potentially affected communities as the fire increases, said agency spokesman Marcus Kauffman. However, fewer homes were immediately at risk, especially on the southern side of the fire, where crews were more successful.

As a result, the number of homes in forced evacuation halved to just over 200 on Friday, with about 2,700 placed on standby alerts.

The strike groups have set up support lines at around 7% of the fire perimeter. The low humidity, dry vegetation and high growth of the fires caused strong winds forced firefighters to get out of the edge of the fire on Friday for the fourth day in a row, authorities said.

“The perimeter of the Bootleg fire is more than 200 miles long. That’s a large number of lines to build and maintain,” incident commander Rob Allen said in a statement.

He said hot, dry, windy conditions would worsen over the weekend, and while meteorologists predicted another major heat wave in the West would arrive, the fourth since early June, which is expected to burn parts of the Northern Rockies and Plains this weekend. and until Monday.

More than 1,900 firefighters and a dozen helicopters and tankers and bulldozers were assigned to Bootleg as it squeezed out the available resources for manpower and equipment demand in the Pacific Northwest.

Bootleg was the largest of the 70 major active fires listed Thursday, burning more than 12 million acres in 12 states, the National Inter-Agency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho reported. According to state forestry data, it was also the fifth largest recorded in Oregon since 1900.

As of Wednesday, the Boise Center was ranked “national level for forest fire preparedness” at No. 5, the highest five-level scale, meaning most U.S. firefighting resources are spread across the country.

The situation was not unusually busy at the start of the season, amid very dry conditions and heat records that have boiled much of the West in recent weeks.

Scientists say the frequency and intensity of the increase in fires can be largely attributed to long droughts and growing excessive heat waves that are symptoms of climate change.

The bootleg fire is so big that it creates its own weather. Pyrocumulus clouds are formed from falling vegetation and condensed moisture that is absorbed through the smoke column by the surrounding atmosphere and can cause lightning and strong winds.

A sudden “collapse” of such a cloud on Friday spread the embers to the east of the main site, causing more evacuation notes for the two communities, Allen said.