Half a million people were evacuated in the state of Oregon on Thursday, as firefighters tackle fires of unprecedented scale across the U.S. West Coast, with local authorities fearing the losses human numbers will increase in the next few days.
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The deaths of at least 15 people have been confirmed in the past 24 hours in California, Oregon and Washington, but officials say some areas are still impossible to reach.
“About 500,000 Oregon residents have been evacuated and that number continues to rise,” according to a statement from state officials, where firefighters are battling wildfires spanning 365,000 hectares, “a record “.
In northwestern California, the fire dubbed “August Complex Fire”, an assembly of 37 fires that affected the Mendocino Forest from August 17, officially became the largest in history in that state on Thursday. , with more than 190,000 hectares.
The fires are spread from Washington State in the north, bordering Canada, to San Diego in the south, on the Mexican border, fueled by a chronic drought and strong winds that were weakening however Thursday.
Five destroyed cities
In Oregon, where at least five cities have been “significantly destroyed,” Governor Kate Brown said that in just three days, the flames had consumed double the vegetation that burns on average in a year. .
“We have never seen fires out of control of such magnitude in our State”, she launched during a press conference, without being able to give an updated assessment of the victims.
In Molalla, one of many towns south of Portland threatened by the fires, police went door-to-door on Thursday to urge all residents to vacate the area, according to instructions.
“It’s very hard. It’s one thing to leave your house, it’s another to be told that you have to leave, ”said Denise Pentz, met by AFP as she hastily piled up her belongings in a room. trailer.
“This is where my children grew up. It’s at my house. But the most important thing is that my babies, my husband, my dog, my cat, that all my neighbors are made to safety, ”she adds.
10 dead in California
In California, police announced the deaths of seven more people in Butte County Thursday evening, bringing the number of people killed in the region, already ravaged by gigantic fires that killed 86 people in November 2018, to 10. And a fourth dead was found in a remote, wilderness area near Oregon.
Further south, near Fresno, many other residents also had to flee within minutes.
Tina Rose, 29, abandoned her home after seeing the mountain “redden” under the effect of the fires. “We were packing everything up and we could hear the propane tanks exploding. When we heard the second, we said to ourselves “We must go in case the fire accelerates”, because you never know, “she told an AFP journalist. “It’s something you never want to relive again.”
The Creek Fire has already burned more than 70,000 hectares, sowing desolation in its path: charred car wrecks, houses of which only the brick chimney remains …
About 360 buildings were destroyed, according to California firefighters, who deployed nearly 1,000 men to fight the flames.
Across the state, more than two dozen fires are raging and the blaze has consumed more than 12,500 km2 in the state this year, a record since these data were recorded in 1987.
Near Los Angeles, the “Bobcat Fire”, still out of control, devastated more than 9,000 hectares, according to firefighters.
More than 200,000 hectares went up in smoke in Washington State, according to Governor Jay Inslee, who on Thursday denounced the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
“We will not give up the future of this state in the face of climate change,” he said on Twitter. “I will think about these fires and their impact on our populations when we make our next decisions to fight climate change.”
He also praised the memory of a one-year-old baby found by rescue teams to his critically burned parents who were trying to escape the blaze, about 200 km from Seattle. “The child’s family and their community will never be the same again,” said Jay Inslee.