Wildfires ravage West amid heatwave
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Three homes lay in ruins Monday after one of the West’s many dangerous wildfires suddenly tore through a Southern California neighborhood during a scorching heat wave.
THE the houses were ravaged The fire broke out Sunday afternoon in a hilly area of Riverside, a city about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east of Los Angeles. Four other buildings were damaged, Riverside Deputy Fire Chief Steve McKinster said.
The cause of the fire, which burned just under a square mile (2.6 square kilometers), was under investigation.
Noel Piri and his wife were out when they got a call about a fire in the neighborhood. They rushed home and rescued their dog. Unfortunately, their house was on fire when firefighters arrived. The Business Press reported.
“It was a little sad to see the house gone,” Piri told the newspaper after digging through the remains of the newly renovated home.
Riverside hit 102 degrees (38.9 Celsius) Sunday amid a heat wave that has focused mostly on inland California and is expected to last much of the week.
Many other fires Fires have also been burning across the state, including one that started Saturday and quickly grew to more than 4 square miles (10.3 square kilometers) on the border of Lake and Colusa counties, northwest of Sacramento. The containment rate reached 25% on Monday.
More than two dozen wildfires burned across the Pacific Northwest and Idaho, where lightning sparked more blazes in Oregon over the weekend amid extremely dry and hot weather. The largest fires were in rural areas of eastern Oregon and Washington, where smoke impacted air quality.
Authorities evacuated the town of Huntington, Oregon, population about 500, and closed a stretch of Interstate 84 Sunday night after thunderstorms caused a massive column of smoke to collapse.
The implosion of the plume sent 50 mph (80 kph) winds in all directions, raising fears the fire could spread beyond I-84, the Baker County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post announcing evacuations “go now.”
By Monday, I-84 had reopened and the city was still safe, but evacuation orders remained in effect and extreme fire behavior was expected again, authorities said. The blaze has covered more than 278 square miles (704 square kilometers) without control.
Large wildfires can generate huge plumes of smoke and ash that can rise more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) depending on conditions such as terrain, weather, and temperature. The columns can collapse when the amount of heat above the fire decreases (due to fuel change or weather) and reduces the updraft, or when strong winds break away from the top of the column.
In the most extreme cases, smoke columns can be topped with “clouds of fire”, or pyrocumulus clouds, which look a lot like the cumulus clouds that develop before a major thunderstorm.
It’s not uncommon for a smoke column to collapse, and some fires go through multiple cycles of column collapse and regeneration in a day, according to the Southwest Fire Science Consortium.
Meanwhile, Utah officials have lifted evacuation orders following a wildfire in Salt Lake City that threatened neighborhoods near the state Capitol over the weekend.
The fire started Saturday and has spread to about 200 acres. The evacuation order was lifted Sunday night, but authorities warned residents to be prepared to evacuate as the fire was only partially contained Monday morning.
