Story at a glance
- The blaze has burned more than 241,000 acres and is just 7 percent contained.
- A new round of evacuations were ordered Thursday for residents near Summer Lake and Paisley due to extreme wildfire behavior.
- “This fire is going to continue to grow – the extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor,” fire officials said.
The largest wildfire in the U.S. is continuing to burn and is virtually uncontained, prompting evacuations for communities in southern Oregon.
The so-called Bootleg Fire moving through Oregon’s Fremont-Winema National Forest has now burned an area larger than New York City, scorching more than 241,000 acres since it was sparked on July 6 with just 7 percent containment as of Friday.
A new round of evacuations were ordered Thursday for residents near Summer Lake and Paisley due to extreme wildfire behavior. The small towns are located in Lake County, an area of lakes and wildlife refuges north of the California border.
Fire officials said pyrocumulus clouds, clouds that develop when a fire rapidly produces smoke plumes, formed over the area high into the atmosphere. Firefighters were pulled back to safe areas late Thursday due to erratic fire behavior. Nearly 2,000 firefighter personnel are working to contain the inferno.
“If these clouds ‘collapse’ they can cause dangerous outflow winds and ember falls for firefighters working in the area,” fire officials said.
Hot, dry and breezy conditions are feeding the fire, and the region is expected to have similar conditions over the next several days.
“This fire is going to continue to grow – the extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor,” Joe Hessel, incident commander for the Oregon Department of Fire, said in a statement Thursday.
“We are going to continue to prepare lines, protect structures, and move resources as we can around the fire’s edge,” Hessel said.
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No serious injuries or deaths have been reported, but the blaze has destroyed dozens of structures and is threatening thousands of homes.
The massive fire comes as much of the western United States is in the throes of record drought and has been hit with heat waves.
A large swatch of Oregon is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Oregon saw three consecutive days of extraordinary temperatures, with temperatures in Portland peaking at 116 degrees late last month.
Oregon blamed 116 deaths on the intense heat.
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