A wildfire is threatening a community in rural northern California near Paradise, where the state’s deadliest wildfire struck six years ago.
The blaze, dubbed the Apache fire, broke out on Monday and had grown to more than 600 acres (243 hectares), prompting evacuation orders.
Firefighters battled the blaze on Tuesday with the aid of improved weather conditions, with containment levels reaching 15%, according to the fire captain Dan Collins. Winds subsided and marine air brought some cooling, which made “the conditions are favorable for us this morning”, he said.
The cause of the wildfire was under investigation.
Evacuation orders were in effect for several local areas but Collins did not know how many people were affected. Two unidentified structures had been destroyed and one firefighter had a minor injury.
Palermo, with a population of 9,400 people, is located about 65 miles (105km) north of the state’s capital in Sacramento. It is part of Butte county, which has seen numerous catastrophic fires in recent years that have permanently altered the region.
The 2018 Camp fire leveled the town of Paradise, about 30 miles from Palermo. The fast-moving blaze, California’s deadliest, killed 85 people, destroyed 14,000 buildings and displaced the vast majority of the town’s 26,000 residents for years.
In 2020, the massive North Complex fire destroyed the mountain hamlet of Berry Creek – about 25 miles from Palermo – and left 16 people dead.
Elsewhere in California, lightning strikes sparked several new fires in the Fresno area on Monday, while in Oregon, a wildfire that grew to more than 1,000 acres over the weekend prompted evacuation orders for nearby homes and campsites.
In New Mexico, residents of a village that was destroyed by fast-moving wildfires last week returned to survey the damage, searching for the remains of people who are still missing.
Village officials estimate that several hundred homes were among the structures destroyed or damaged there. Images shared on social media showed charred vehicles and homes reduced to ash, only their foundations or fireplaces left standing.
While the area is no stranger to wildfires, Kerry Gladden, a spokesperson for the village of Ruidoso, described the scene as “a whole other level of devastation”.
“It kind of takes your breath away when you see it,” she told the Associated Press. “And you know, we are resilient and we will rebuild and we will absolutely come back from this. But, boy, it’s hard to see it at this point.”
In all, more than 100 new fires – most of them small – were reported in New Mexico and Arizona over the last seven days, according to the multi-agency Southwest Coordination Center based in Albuquerque. Nationwide, more than a dozen large fires that have not been contained are currently burning, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Aside from the South Fork and Salt fires in Ruidoso, complex incident management teams are assigned to blazes in Washington and Colorado.
Experts have predicted this summer could be an especially active wildfire season in the US due to a convergence of forces, including a wet winter that fueled the growth of grasses that are now drying out, as well as challenging weather conditions such as extreme heat and wind.