Two bodies were found inside a burned-out car in the path of a huge northern California forest fire raging near the Oregon border, authorities said on Monday, as crews battling the flames for a fourth day took advantage of rainfall sweeping the area.
Since erupting on Friday, the fast-moving McKinney Fire has forced some 2,000 residents to flee while destroying homes and critical infrastructure, mostly in Siskiyou County, home to the Klamath National Forest, according to a statement from Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday.
Authorities have yet to quantify the extent of property losses, but the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said in an update posted on Monday that more than 4,500 structures were threatened by flames.
Already the largest blaze in California this year, the fire has charred 55,493 acres 22,457 hectares) of drought-stressed timber and remained at 0% containment, Cal Fire reported.
Two smaller wildfires in the same county that scorched more than 1,700 acres combined as of Sunday and chased at least 200 residents from their homes, Cal Fire said.
The two bodies from the McKinney fire were found on Sunday in a car parked in a residential driveway west of the community of Klamath River, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Monday. The agency said it would have no further information about the deaths pending identification and notification of next to kin.
EXTREME DROUGHT, HEAT
The cause of the blaze was under investigation. But the fire erupted amid record-breaking heat in a region where desiccated trees and undergrowth already had created a highly combustible fuel bed.
Prolonged drought and unusually warm weather have stoked increasingly frequent and extreme wildfire behavior in California and elsewhere across the Western United States in recent years, a pattern scientists say is symptomatic of human-induced climate change.
Firefighting crews were taking advantage of a low-pressure weather system that brought rain to the northern and eastern flanks of the fire zone on Sunday evening, and continued to douse the region on Monday, U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman said.
Remains of a property destroyed by the McKinney Fire are seen near Yreka, California, U.S., July 31, 2022. REUTERS/Fred Greaves
But the same weather system also brings the potential for thunderstorms, and with it erratic winds and lightning strikes.
“The one thing we’ve learned about thunderstorms is we can’t predict what’s going to happen,” Freeman said. “So our crews are out early. They’re building containment lines actively on the edge of the fire and they will continue to do that for as long as we can and hope that the conditions we’re seeing now hold.”
Much of the work carving containment lines, by hacking away unburned vegetation to create a buffer against further spread of the flames, was focused along the Klamath River corridor near the towns of Yreka and Fort Jones, Freeman said.
A layer of heavy smoke trapped close to the ground by low pressure, a phenomenon called an “inversion layer,” also has helped to tamp down fire growth since Sunday evening, though reduced visibility also limited efforts to deploy aircraft to fight the blaze, according to the Forest Service.
“Red flag” warnings for extreme fire danger remain in effect through Tuesday in much of Siskiyou County, a sparsely populated area larger than the state of Connecticut, as forecasts called for a high chance of “dry” lightning strikes capable of igniting new blazes, the National Weather Service said.
Newsom declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County on Sunday, a step that will help residents gain access to federal aid and unlock state resources.
Among the fire evacuees was Harlene Althea Schwander, 81, an artist who moved to the area only a month ago to be near her son and daughter-in-law.
“I’m very sad. My house is gone, all my furniture, all clothes, shoes, coats, boots. Everything is gone,” Schwander told Reuters on Sunday outside an American Red Cross evacuation shelter.
The McKinney blaze marked the second major wildfire in California this season. The Oak Fire near Yosemite National Park was 67% contained after blackening more than 19,244 acres, Cal Fire said on its website.
