California’s largest active fire exploded in size on Friday evening, multiplying amid bone-dry fuel and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters scrambled to meet the danger.
The Park Fire’s intensity and dramatic spread led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes.
More than 130 structures have been destroyed by this fire so far, and thousands more are threatened as evacuations were ordered in four counties — Butte, Plumas, Tehama, and Shasta. It stood at 374 square miles (967 square kilometers) on Friday night. It was moving quickly north and east after igniting Wednesday when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then calmly blended in with others fleeing the scene.
Officials at Lassen Volcanic National Park evacuated staff from Mineral, a community of about 120 people where the park headquarters are located, as the fire moved north toward Highway 36 and east toward the park.
Communities elsewhere in the U.S. West and Canada were under siege Friday, from a fast-moving blaze sparked by lightning sent people fleeing on fire-ringed roads in rural Idaho to a new blaze causing evacuations in eastern Washington.
