US wildfires: Smog blankets West coast
Dense smog from US wildfires that have burnt nearly five million acres and killed 27 people smothered the West Coast on Saturday, as crews were to resume searching for the dead among blackened ruins left by fires in three western US states.
US officials girded for the possibility of further fatalities as wide stretches of land in California, Oregon and Washington remained cut off by flames fuelled by tinder-dry conditions of the kind caused by climate change.
Unprecedented infernos have now destroyed an area roughly the size of New Jersey.
Worsening the sense of environmental catastrophe, all five of the world’s most air-polluted cities on Saturday were on the West Coast, according to IQAir, with dense smog and ash from the blazes coating the atmosphere from Los Angeles up to Vancouver in Canada.
In Portland, thick, choking smoke blanketed the downtown area Saturday morning.
“It is as if I had smoked 100 cigarettes. I’ve never seen this but we try to stay positive as conditions are getting better,” said a 37-year-old man who gave his name only as Jessie.
More than 20,000 firefighters are battling the blazes, with officials warning that a respite provided by the arrival of cooler weather could end on Monday with the return of warmer, drier weather.
Emergency official Andrew Phelps warned Oregon is “preparing for a mass fatality incident based on what we know and the number of structures that have been lost.”
In California, Butte County sheriff Kory Honea said additional officials had been brought in to check for human remains, but “right now, the areas that we need to search are too hot”.
Presidential challenger Joe Biden warned that climate change is becoming an “existential” issue. “President Trump can try to deny that reality, but the facts are undeniable,” he said ahead of Trump’s planned visit to California on Monday.
The dry, windy conditions that fed the flames in Oregon were probably a once-in-a-generation event, said Greg Jones, a professor and research climatologist at Linfield University. The warmer world can increase the likelihood of extreme events and contribute to their severity, he said.