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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Lois Beckett (now) and Martin Pengelly (earlier)

US wildfires: at least 20 dead as California governor signs bill addressing incarcerated firefighters – as it happened

Inmate firefighters sit on the back of a fire truck while taking a break from the Bear fire, in unincorporated Butte county, in Oroville, California.
Inmate firefighters sit on the back of a fire truck while taking a break from the Bear fire, in unincorporated Butte county, in Oroville, California. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

Evening fire news summary

We are wrapping up our live coverage of wildfires on the west coast for today. We’ll have more live coverage tomorrow. Some key developments today:

  • As fires smolder across the region, the air quality across swathes of the west coast today, including in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, is some of the worst in the entire world, “unhealthy” or “very unhealthy” to breathe in areas where tens of millions of people live.
  • Washington state governor Jay Inslee argued that the fires should be called “climate fires” to highlight the role of climate change in the unfolding devastation.
  • California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will make it easier for incarcerated people who serve as firefighters for pennies an hour while imprisoned to get paid jobs as firefighters upon their release.
  • While highlighting the role of climate change in the current crisis, Newsom also faced criticism from activists for his administration’s continuing role in approving oil and gas permits in the state.
  • In Washington and Oregon, a firefighters’ union, law enforcement agencies and journalists highlighted the troubling role of misinformation spreading on Facebook claiming that “antifa” or “Proud Boys” were involved in setting fires.
  • In Paradise, California, the site of the state’s deadliest fire in 2018, ash gathered on the sidewalks as residents who had rebuilt their community tried to keep going amid the smoke from new fires.

Updated

Fire toll revised to nine people killed, due to ‘anatomical skeleton’ mistake

Some good news from Action News Now: a local sheriff has revised the number of people believed to be killed in the Bear Fire (part of the North Complex of fires in California) from ten to nine.

“One of the cases turned out to be an anatomical model of a skeleton that deputies found inside a persons home. When deputies first found the skeleton in its burned condition, it appeared to be a human,” Action News Now reports.

"Unhealthy" or "very unhealthy" air affecting Americans across the West Coast

Wildfires burning across the West Coast have resulted in air that is dangerous to breathe for tens of millions of Americans across major metropolitan areas.

NBC Bay Area meteorologist Rob Mayeda broke it down:

Here’s an image from San Francisco:

And from Seattle:

Call them 'climate fires,' Washington's governor argues

Washington Governor Jay Inslee says the fires devastating California and the Northwest shouldn’t be called wildfires, but “climate fires”, the Associated Press reports.

At a news conference Friday, the Democrat noted that the roughly 980 square miles burned in Washington in just the last five days amounts to the state’s second worst fire season on record, after 2015.

“This is not an act of God,” Inslee said. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.”

Inslee ran for the Democratic presidential nomination on a climate platform and said it’s important to fight the fires not just on the ground, but by creating clean-energy jobs and taking other measures to combat climate change.

Scientists have long said that human-caused climate change would result in hotter temperatures and more extreme weather events, such as droughts, that can increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

Updated

‘Where are you gonna go now?’ California evacuees ask

A handful of evacuees from the North Complex fire have sought refuge at the Home Depot in Oroville. Some slept in their cars earlier in the week and several RVs remain in the parking lot.

Rob Williams, who lost his home in Paradise in 2018 and moved to Oroville, evacuated from the North Complex fire late Tuesday night with his wife, dog and cat. They considered staying but could see the nearby hills glowing with flames. The couple packed up their camper, forced to leave behind their goats and chickens, and fled to the large parking lot of the Home Depot where staff welcomed evacuees with bottles of water.

With a camper, the couple can at least be comfortable, Williams says. “You can close your eyes and pretend you’re in the redwoods.”

It’s the second time he’s camped in a Home Depot parking lot after escaping a fire in two years. He’d leave the state, but his grandchild in Butte county keeps him here. And fires, he says, are “just part of life now”.

“Where are you gonna go now?” He asks. “Idaho is on fire. Oregon is on fire. Back East they have tornadoes.”

The Guardian’s Dani Anguiano is the co-author of Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, published this year. For more on the deep reporting of the impact of that fire, read an excerpt here.

Updated

Family mourns 16-year-old killed in California fire

Among the ten people confirmed killed in the North Complex fire in California: teenager Josiah “JoJo” Williams.

The Los Angeles Times has an account of what happened:

Justin Williams and his two sons were at home in Berry Creek when the fire exploded Wednesday. As Williams hopped in one car to check on family in the area, he said that Josiah, 16, and his older brother, who had been visiting from Indiana, were supposed to leave in their respective cars.

When Williams reached the bottom of the hill and realized the two hadn’t escaped, he tried desperately to drive back to the house. But he was stopped by police...

Read the full story here.

In Paradise, California, 'people thought the fires were behind us'

The devastation spreading across the west coast this week is familiar to the residents of Paradise, where in 2018 California’s deadliest fire killed 85 people.

In Paradise today, smoke was again draped over the town like fog. Ash from the nearby North Complex fires piled up on sidewalks and gutters and blew through the air. The new fire has killed 10 people in Berry creek, a nearby foothill hamlet, and largely leveled that town.

At Treasures from Paradise, an antique shop that was destroyed in the fire and reopened in 2019, owners Barbara and Rick Manson had planned to keep the store closed Friday to focus on cleaning up the ash from outside and removing the smell of smoke indoors. But as they worked, customers streamed in, still looking for a slice of normalcy amid another disaster, and the Mansons couldn’t turn them away.

“People came in and wanted to shop, and we said ‘come on in’,” Barbara said as a handful of customers walked around the store, admiring the small bits of antiques and inspecting the Paradise themed-goods, T-shirts and metal signs. “We’re gonna be here as long as the place doesn’t burn down around us.”

Paradise isn’t considered at risk at this point, though earlier in the week, officials issued an evacuation warning for parts of Paradise. At that point, the Mansons, who live in Chico but have run an antique store on the Ridge for decades, came and gathered their important paperwork. The shop was dark due to a power shutoff, and traffic piled up outside, reminiscent of that Thursday morning in November 2018 when thousands had to flee all at once. The couple is optimistic, and think Paradise will be safe, but still are preparing for any possibility. Rick has been watering the grass and around the building to protect in the event of another fire.

“A lot of people are hurting. I think people thought the fires were behind us,” Barbara said.

At Nic’s, a restaurant that Nicki Jones, 75, opened just last year, diners ate their food at socially-distanced tables and neighbors and friends ran into one another. Butte county announced this week that restaurants could open for indoor dining as smoke from the 252,534 acre wildfire created unhealthy air, though by mid-afternoon it would rescind that order.

Jones, whose new home is expected to be move-in ready next month, said that despite the threat of fire and ongoing risk, she was committed to Paradise. The business was doing well, though faced challenges from Covid, she said.

“I love what I do and I love my town,” she said. “That keeps me going.”

The Guardian’s Dani Anguiano is the co-author of Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, published this year. For more on the deep reporting of the impact of that fire, read an excerpt here.

Updated

Newsom’s administration approved 48 fracking permits since April

California governor Gavin Newsom is making headlines nationwide with his comments about the seriousness of the climate crisis, and how the extreme weather and fire California is experiencing now are part of an unfolding climate emergency.

But as Newsom is warning about the importance of taking climate change seriously, journalists point out that his administration has approved dozens of fracking permits this spring, as well as approved drilling permits for 1,400 new oil and gas wells in 2020, as Kate Aronoff reported in the New Republic on Thursday.

Even as California Democrats have touted the benefits of clean energy, they’ve also stayed friendly with oil and gas companies. California’s “de facto ‘all of the above’ climate policy – leaving plenty of room for fossil fuels as it builds out renewables – is a dangerous model for Democrats nationwide to keep following,” Aronoff argues.

Aronoff’s article is now being shared by dozens of Twitter accounts with an identical message to Newsom that, my colleague Maanvi Singh noted, appears to come from Greenpeace.

Updated

Amid estimates that the west coast climate fires are already six times more expansive than they were last year, economic impact forecasts are rudimentary at best.

But a study of the devastating wildfire season of 2018 does offer some instruction.

In all, that wildfire season burned 8.7m acres, far surpassing the 10-year average of 6.8m acres a year. The total cost was a staggering $24bn, primarily from the destruction of homes and infrastructure as well as firefighting expenses.

The 2018 wildfire season overtook 2017 as the most expensive. The two years together caused an unprecedented $40bn of damage.

According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California destroyed more than 18,500 structures and cost an estimated $15bn.

The study found that wildfires hurt communities, the economy, human health and the environment long after the fire is out. Reduced air quality, increasing eye and respiratory illnesses, contaminated drinking water, increased likelihood of flooding and landslides, as well as disrupted energy and electricity supplies and transmission, all contribute to such costs.

California governor signs bill for formerly incarcerated firefighters

From the site of a wildfire in Oroville, California, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that will give some people who served as firefighters while incarcerated a chance to expunge their record so they get paid jobs as firefighters after they are released.

California’s use of prisoners, who earn just pennies an hour for the dangerous work of fighting wildfires, has attracted intense criticism, particularly because of the barriers those people faced to getting jobs as firefighters after their release.

Newsom framed the new law as offering formerly incarcerated people a “second chance”.

Amika Mota wrote about her experience as an incarcerated firefighter for the Guardian a few days ago:

Updated

California governor: ‘We’re in the midst of a climate crisis’

Speaking from the site of the North Complex fire in Oroville, California governor Gavin Newsom said the state was seeing the reality of climate change play out in real time, and that the state’s clean energy goals and other preventive efforts were “inadequate”.

“What we’re experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the United States of America, unless we can act on climate change,” Newsom warned.

“Everything we’ve done is inadequate,” Newsom said, saying he was directing state officials to review and update the state’s preventive efforts and determine how to “fast track” them.

Updated

'Apocalyptic scenes' in Oregon

About one in ten Oregon residents have been told to evacuate, the New York Times reported Friday.

The National Weather Service announced that a massive cloud of smoke will spread across Washington state. The NWS Seattle office said air quality “deteriorated” overnight, with some areas in the “hazardous category” at 5am and others “creeping towards very unhealthy”.

The service tweeted a picture of the smoke descending on the area

From southern Oregon, meanwhile, Reuters reports on…

… an apocalyptic scene of burned residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99 south of Medford through Phoenix and Talent, one of the worst hit areas.

Blazes jumped from wildfires burning through scrub and forest to suburban firestorms as flames jumped from house to house.

Men walk through the fire-ravaged Coleman Creek Estates mobile home park in Phoenix, Oregon on Wednesday.
Men walk through the fire-ravaged Coleman Creek Estates mobile home park in Phoenix, Oregon on Wednesday. Photograph: Scott Stoddard/AP

Online video from the Tacoma, Washington, area showed fires starting in a residential area and setting homes ablaze, and locals running from house to house to warn neighbors.

“Everybody out, everybody out,” a man screamed as firefighters tried to douse flames.

19 dead, 3.1m acres burned this year in California fires

Cal Fire, the state department that monitors fires across the state, just sent out the latest summary of the ongoing fires here.

  • Since the beginning of this year, there have been 3.1m acres burned in California. That’s 26 times higher than the number of acres that burned over the same time period last year.
  • There have been more than 3,900 structures destroyed.
  • Five of the top 20 largest wildfires in California’s history have occurred this year, including the August Complex fire, the single largest fire in the state’s history.
  • There have been 19 fire-related fatalities this year, including 7 additional fatalities reported in the North Complex fire in Butte county.

What passes for good news right now: “The smoke layer covering much of Northern California will help maintain cooler temperatures into the weekend,” CalFire reports.

Updated

Smoke from California’s wildfires has reached Europe, satellite group reports

Most TV news coverage of California wildfires makes no mention of climate change

Most TV news coverage of the wildfires now raging in California, Oregon and Washington states made no mention of the connection between the historic fires and climate change, according to a new analysis from Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog group.

Only 15% of corporate TV news segments analyzed over the holiday weekend mentioned climate change, an increase from a mere 4% of wildfire segments in the month of August, Media Matters found.

The organization singled out two TV news journalists for praise in regularly talking about the role of climate change: CBS meteorologist and climate specialist Jeff Berardelli and NBC’s Al Roker.

Washington firefighter: ‘Facebook is an absolute cesspool of misinformation right now’

This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live coverage of the fires on the West Coast from our Los Angeles office.

In Washington state, a firefighter posted an exhausted update last night about fighting fires, and having to simultaneously fight the rapid spread of false information claiming that politically-motivated groups have started the fires.

The post, written on a local firefighters’ union page, was flagged by NBC News as part of a broader piece about fire disinformation, including the role QAnon conspiracy theory groups online are playing in spreading lies about the fires:

I also want to address an issue that keeps coming up, even from some of the public that we are talking too while working. It is hot, dry, and fire spreads quickly in those conditions. There is nothing to show its Antifa, or Proud Boys setting fires. Wait for information. These get investigated, and YES, fires start for lots of reasons, that most are not nefarious.

[Facebook] is an absolute cesspool of misinformation right now. Especially any of the neighborhood groups you may be in. Please, dont share or spread, unverified, non-news related info. I kindly urge you to wait for the facts. Get your info from official sources, and even though the “news” has made mistakes, does not make every news story “Fake News”.

Updated

Misinformation about the source of the wildfires raging across the Pacific north-west is spreading rapidly on social media, prompting public officials to plead with the public to stop sharing rumors.

Many of the rumors claim without evidence that the fires were lit by political activists, either by the far-right group the Proud Boys or the leftist activists known as antifa.

“We are inundated with questions about things that are FAKE stories,” the sheriff’s office in Jackson county, Oregon, wrote on Facebook Thursday afternoon. “Rumors make the job of protecting the community more difficult,” the office added.

“Rumors spread just like wildfire and now our 9-1-1 dispatchers and professional staff are being overrun with requests for information and inquiries on an UNTRUE rumor that 6 Antifa members have been arrested for setting fires in DOUGLAS COUNTY, OREGON,” the Douglas county sheriff’s office posted on Facebook on Thursday.

Fear grips Molalla, Oregon – as vigilantes patrol

Our contributor reports from Molalla, Oregon, where, he writes, “as in other western towns, fear, uncertainty and disinformation gripped [the town] ahead of the evacuation”.

In preceding days, Facebook pages associated with the town were filled with rumors of looters and Antifa raids. On its Facebook page overnight, Molalla PD was forced to amend a call for residents to report suspicious activity.

“This is about possible looters, not antifa or setting of fires”, the edit read. “There has been NO antifa in town as of this posting at 02am. Please, folks, stay calm and use common sense.”

The effects of this disinformation were dangerously evident on the ground.

On Thursday afternoon, three journalists were confronted by men with AR15s and summarily ordered to leave Molalla. One of them, Sergio Olmos, who was on assignment for Oregon Public Broadcasting, said the orders were given by the men, who were apparently civilians, without explanations or identification.

Further afield, other men with similar sympathies appeared to be on patrol. Although few vehicles were left in Mulino save those belonging to emergency services, on the trip there, and again on back roads en route to Oregon city, men in trucks bearing thin blue line flags – a badge of membership for rightwing movements – were observed in states of hyper-vigilance.

Some appeared to be noting the faces and number plates of passers-by. Others sent horn honks and supportive gestures towards trucks bearing similar regalia.

Updated

Peter Gleick, a hydroclimatologist, member of the US National Academy of Sciences and MacArthur Fellow, writes for the Guardian, powerfully, from his home in California:

Like millions of people in the western United States this week, I woke up to deep red, sunless skies, layers of ash coating the streets, gardens, and cars, and the smell of burning forests, lives, homes, and dreams. Not to be too hyperbolic, but on top of the political chaos, the economic collapse, and the worst pandemic in modern times, it seemed more than a little apocalyptic.

Too much of the western United States is on fire, and many areas not suffering directly from fire are enveloped in choking, acrid smoke.

While fires in the west are not unusual or unexpected, these fires are different: they’re earlier, bigger, and hotter than usual. They are expanding explosively, overwhelming towns and firefighting resources. And there’s no getting away from them. As of Thursday evening, five of the 10 largest wildfires in California’s history are burning. Seven of the 10 largest fires have occurred in the last four years. This isn’t normal.

What’s different now? Human-caused climate change.

An alarming report from the Associated Press, which says “a northern California wildfire that destroyed a foothill hamlet has become the state’s deadliest blaze of the year, with 10 people confirmed dead”.

Here’s more:

The terrible toll of California’s wildfires became more evident as a mother confirmed her 16-year-old son was among those killed when an inferno tore through several hamlets in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada this week.

Jessica Williams, who earlier pleaded for her missing son Josiah to call her, told CBS13 Sacramento that DNA confirmed the teen’s death.

“He was alone, terrified and ran for his life ... my son was a good, smart, caring young boy that died alone and it kills me thinking about what he was going through,” she said.

It was not immediately clear if the teen was counted among the 10 wildfire deaths or 16 missing persons reported so far by local authorities.

The North Complex fire near the small city of Oroville that exploded in wind-driven flames earlier in the week was advancing more slowly on Friday after the winds eased and smoke from the blaze shaded the area and lowered the temperature, allowing firefighters to make progress, authorities said.

However, the smoke made for poor visibility and fire helicopters couldn’t fly on Thursday.

Good morning …

… and welcome to our continuing coverage of the deadly wildfires on the US west coast, in California, Oregon and Washington state.

Our latest news report is here. In summary, at least 20 people are dead and hundreds of thousands have been put on alert to evacuate. In Washington state, Governor Jay Inslee, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination on a climate-focused platform, said:

We talk about this as wildfires, we have to start thinking about it as more of a climate fire.

Much more to come. In the meantime, here’s a map of the situation:

Map

Updated

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