SACRAMENTO: Uncontrolled wildfires driven by high winds and unprecedented temperatures raged across the US West on Tuesday, incinerating the Washington town of Malden and threatening communities in Oregon and California.
Firefighters and emergency responders searched on Tuesday for residents of tiny Malden, about 480 km east of Seattle, a day after a firestorm destroyed 80 per cent of its homes, along with the fire station, post office, city hall and library.
“The scale of this disaster really can’t be expressed in words,” said Brett Myers, sheriff of Whitman County, where the town of 200-300 people is located. “I pray everyone got out in time.”
Soaring temperatures
That fire was one of dozens of large blazes burning in Washington, Oregon and California over the Labor Day holiday weekend, as the thermometer soared. Temperatures in the western part of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley topped 49 degrees Celsius..
In California, about 14,000 firefighters battled 25 blazes, with more than 2.2 million acres (charred since the fire season got an early start last month, a record for this point in the year, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
Community threatened
The blaze, which started on 4 September, threatened the community of Shaver Lake, among others, fuelled in part by trees weakened by drought and killed by the invasive bark beetle, the fire agency said.
A state of emergency was declared on Sunday in Fresno, Madera, Mariposa, San Bernardino and San Diego counties due to the wildfires.
The US Forest Service temporarily closed some national forests, including the Sierra National Forest, the Angeles National Forest and the San Bernardino National Forest.