Park fire balloons in California as blazes spread across West

A raging wildfire in Northern California known as the Park fire has ballooned to more than 120,000 acres, quickly becoming the largest in the state this year, as scores more fires burning along the West Coast signaled an early start to what could be a devastating fire season.

Authorities said the fire, burning near the college town of Chico, north of Sacramento, is believed to have been sparked by a man accused of pushing a burning car into a gully Wednesday afternoon, sending it 60 feet down an embankment.

Ronnie Dean Stout, a 42-year-old Chico resident, was arrested after witnesses said they saw him push the car down into the gully and then calmly leave the area, apparently trying to blend into a crowd of people fleeing the rapidly growing flames, according to the Butte County district attorney’s office.

The Park fire was one of scores burning in the western United States, creating smoky skies that reached all the way to the East Coast.

“Unfortunately, we’ve gotten off to a running start here in Northern California,” said Dan Collins, a fire captain and spokesperson for the Cal Fire unit in Butte County. “We’re prepared to fight the fight.”

On Wednesday, after the Park fire began growing rapidly, local fire officials sent out a call for help. Collins said hundreds of firefighters were battling the blaze, with many more driving in from around the state. Aircraft were also being used to fight the fire.

As of Thursday afternoon, the fire was just 3% contained and had prompted evacuation orders in parts of Butte and Tehama counties.

State fire officials said Thursday morning that firefighters were focused on evacuations and protecting structures, while also using bulldozers and fire crews to build lines to contain the fire.

There were also 43 active wildfires in Oregon and Washington, covering more than 1 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Many fires are exhibiting “extreme fire behavior,” the center said.

The Durkee fire in Oregon, near the border with Idaho, grew amid thunderstorms Wednesday and is the largest wildfire in the United States, covering more than 268,000 acres as of Thursday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

More than 4,000 people in Oregon were under evacuation orders as of Thursday afternoon, according to the Oregon Department of Emergency Management. Air-quality warnings were issued in parts of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, with health officials cautioning that the wildfires and strong winds could combine to raise pollutants to unhealthy levels.

Fire investigators have said some among a series of fires in Oregon that began in the early hours of July 11 are human-caused and “suspicious,” and have asked for the public’s help to investigate.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement Wednesday that fires in the eastern part of the state had “scaled up quickly.”

In California, officials did not offer a motive in the Park fire arson case, although they said at a news conference Thursday afternoon that it was a car belonging to Stout’s mother that started the fire.

Stout had previous criminal convictions that required him to register as a sex offender and for robbery with great bodily injury, according to the district attorney’s office. He was sentenced to state prison for 20 years in the robbery case but was out by 2020, when he was arrested for driving under the influence, authorities said.

Stout was being held in a local jail without bail on suspicion of intentional arson and was scheduled to be arraigned Monday. The district attorney said what charges would ultimately be filed would hinge on whether anyone is injured or killed in the fire.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.