Western wildfires: Crews make progress on huge Oregon blaze

BLY, Ore. (AP) — The nation’s largest wildfire raged through southern Oregon on Friday but crews were scaling back some night operations as hard work and weaker winds helped reduce the spread of flames even as wildfires continued to threaten homes in neighboring California.

The Bootleg Fire, which has destroyed an area half the size of Rhode Island, was 40% surrounded after burning some 70 homes, mainly cabins, fire officials said.

BLY, OR – JULY 22 : Tim and Dee McCauley’s cat Bunny roams amongst the charred debris of their property on July 22, 2021 in Bly, Oregon. The Bootleg Fire, which started on July 6th near Beatty, Oregon, has burned over 399,000 acres and is currently 38 percent contained. (Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)

At least 2,000 homes were ordered evacuated at some point during the fire and an additional 5,000 were threatened.

The upper eastern edge of the blaze continued to move toward Summer Lake, jumping fire lines on Thursday and prompting a local evacuation order for some portions of Lake County to be raised to “go now!,” fire officials said.

Winds up to 10 miles per hour (16 kilometers per hour) could drive the flames through timber but not at the pace seen last week, when the wind-driven blaze grew exponentially, fire information officer Angela Goldman said.

The fire, which was sparked by lightning, had been expanding by up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day, pushed by strong winds and critically dry weather.

There was good news on the lower portion of the 624-square-mile (1,616-square-kilometer) blaze. Crews had locked in containment lines and on the lower southeastern side, crews were able to gain a substantial foothold, allowing them to cut back to nighttime patrols from what had been a “24-7 run-and-gun” fight, fire information officer Sarah Gracey said.

“For us, that’s a pretty big step,” she said. “It’s not that easy to work in a pitch-black forest in the middle of the night.”

FREMONT NATIONAL FOREST, OR – JULY 21: A tree stump is engulfed in flames in the Bravo Bravo section of the Bootleg Fire on July 21, 2021 in the Fremont National Forest of Oregon. The Bootleg Fire, which started on July 6th near Beatty, Oregon, has burned over 395,000 acres and is currently 38% contained. (Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)

Crews will be able to rest and contribute to dayside attacks, she said.

“We have had day after day of red flag warnings (of extreme fire danger) and today we don’t have a red flag warning,” Gracey said Thursday. However, low humidity and high temperatures remained a concern.

That side of the blaze also had burned into an area blackened by a previous fire, creating gaps in the fuel and reducing the spread of flames through grass, shrub and timber, Gracey said.

In California, the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe had burned more than 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) of timber and head-high chaparral in national forest land. It erupted July 4 and was one of nearly two dozen blazes sparked by lightning strikes.

The fire in Alpine County has destroyed at least 10 buildings. Fire officials expected active or extreme fire behavior on Friday because of afternoon gusts and temperatures approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).

Fire from the Bootleg Fire illuminates smoke at night near Bly, Oregon on July 16, 2021. – The extreme drought-hit western United States braced for more wildfire destruction July 16, 2021 as efforts to contain a vast blaze scorching southern Oregon failed to progress, and dangerous dry lightning storms were forecast in California. The Bootleg Fire near Oregon’s border with California grew overnight to 240,000 acres — larger than New York City, and by far the biggest active blaze in the US — while remaining just seven percent contained. (Photo by Payton Bruni / AFP) (Photo by PAYTON BRUNI/AFP via Getty Images)

Blowing embers from flames ignited a new spot fire Thursday afternoon that jumped the highway north of Topaz Lake on the California-Nevada line, prompting a new evacuation order at Topaz Lake Estates and neighboring areas.

The fire was less than a mile from the estates, a community of around 1,200 people in Douglas County, Nevada.

“Firefighters on the ground and aircraft continue to battle the growing spot under exceptionally difficult weather and fuel condition,” the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest said in an update.

It estimated the new blaze already had burned nearly 4 square miles (10 square kilometers).

New mandatory evacuation orders were issued Thursday in Plumas County west of the Nevada border as the Dixie Fire continued to grow explosively eastward.

“This fire is outpacing us at moments,” Shannon Prather, the incident commander, said Thursday evening.

The fire had burned nearly 177 square miles (458 square kilometers), destroyed at least eight buildings and threatened at least 1,500 more, fire officials said.

Extremely dry conditions and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

FREMONT NATIONAL FOREST, OR – JULY 21: A tree stump is engulfed in flames in the Bravo Bravo section of the Bootleg Fire on July 21, 2021 in the Fremont National Forest of Oregon. The Bootleg Fire, which started on July 6th near Beatty, Oregon, has burned over 395,000 acres and is currently 38% contained. (Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
BLY, OR – JULY 22 : Tim and Dee McCauley’s cat Bunny roams amongst the charred debris of their property on July 22, 2021 in Bly, Oregon. The Bootleg Fire, which started on July 6th near Beatty, Oregon, has burned over 399,000 acres and is currently 38 percent contained. (Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
FREMONT NATIONAL FOREST, OR – JULY 21: A tree stump is engulfed in flames in the Bravo Bravo section of the Bootleg Fire on July 21, 2021 in the Fremont National Forest of Oregon. The Bootleg Fire, which started on July 6th near Beatty, Oregon, has burned over 395,000 acres and is currently 38% contained. (Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
Fire from the Bootleg Fire illuminates smoke at night near Bly, Oregon on July 16, 2021. – The extreme drought-hit western United States braced for more wildfire destruction July 16, 2021 as efforts to contain a vast blaze scorching southern Oregon failed to progress, and dangerous dry lightning storms were forecast in California. The Bootleg Fire near Oregon’s border with California grew overnight to 240,000 acres — larger than New York City, and by far the biggest active blaze in the US — while remaining just seven percent contained. (Photo by Payton Bruni / AFP) (Photo by PAYTON BRUNI/AFP via Getty Images)