Wildfires in Oregon have burned more acres of land in 2024 than in any year since reliable records began, authorities said Friday, with the mid-August peak of fire season still on the horizon.
Blazes have scorched more than 1.4 million acres, or nearly 2,200 square miles (5,700 square kilometres), Northwest Interagency Coordination Centre spokesperson Carol Connolly said. That's more than any other year since 1992, when reliable records began to be kept, she said, and surpasses the previous record set in 2020.
Connolly said 71 large fires have burned the vast majority of the land this year. Large fires are defined as those that consume more than 100 acres (40 hectares) of timber or more than 300 acres (120 hectares) of grass or brush.
Thirty-two homes in the state have been lost to the fires, she said, which have been fueled by high temperatures, dry weather and low humidity.
They have prompted evacuation notices across the state and largely torched rural and mountain areas, although some have also sparked closer to the Portland metro area.
Level 3 “go now” evacuation notices were in place Friday for the small town of Cherry Grove, about 35 miles (56 kilometres) west of Portland, as a fire burned in the nearby forest. David Huey, a deputy with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said most residents evacuated after officers went door to door encouraging them to leave.
Aeroplanes and helicopters were scooping water from nearby Henry Hagg Lake to drop on the fire, said Gert Zoutendijk, spokesperson for the Gaston Rural Fire District. The lake was set to be closed to the public throughout the weekend.
The fire was roughly 0.5 square miles (1.3 square kilometres) with zero containment as of Friday afternoon, although crews have made progress on lining the fire, Zoutendijk said.
Another fire near the Portland suburb of Oregon City led authorities to temporarily close part of a state highway in the morning and issue “go now” evacuation orders along part of the route. By mid-afternoon, authorities downgraded the evacuation and reopened the highway.
The largest blaze is the Durkee Fire in eastern Oregon, which has scorched more than 459 square miles (1,200 square kilometres) but was at least 95% contained as of Friday, according to authorities. At one point it was the biggest fire in the country.
California's Park Fire has since become the largest, burning more than 660 square miles (1,710 square kilometres) and destroying more than 600 structures. A man was arrested and accused of starting the fire by pushing a burning car into a gully in a wilderness park outside the Sacramento Valley city of Chico.
Some of the fires in Oregon's previous record-worst year, 2020, were among the worst natural disasters in the state's history. Blazes over Labor Day weekend killed nine people, burned more than 1,875 square miles (4,860 square kilometres) and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures.
