Western fires advance amid heat wave
Firefighters working in searing weather struggled to contain a Northern California wildfire that continued to grow Sunday and forced the temporary closure of a major highway, one of several large blazes burning across the U.S. West amid another heat wave that shattered records and strained power grids.
Two firefighters died Saturday in Arizona after a plane they were in crashed during a survey of a small wildfire in rural Mohave County. The Beech C-90 aircraft was helping perform reconnaissance over the lightning-caused Cedar Basin Fire, near the tiny community of Wikieup, when it went down around noon.
The two firefighters were the only people on board. Officials identified one of them as Jeff Piechura, a retired Tucson fire chief who was working for the U.S. Forest Service. The name of the other was withheld until relatives could be notified. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
In California, officials asked all residents to reduce power consumption quickly after a major wildfire in southern Oregon knocked out interstate power lines, preventing up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity from flowing into the state.
The California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s power grid, said Saturday the Bootleg Fire took three transmission lines off-line, straining electricity supplies as temperatures in the area soared.
“The Bootleg Fire will see the potential for extreme growth today,” the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon, tweeted Sunday.
Death Valley in southeastern California’s Mojave Desert reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service’s reading at Furnace Creek. The shockingly high temperature was actually lower than the previous day, when the temperature reached 130 F.
If confirmed as accurate, the 130 degree reading would be the hottest high recorded there since July 1913, when the Furnace Creek desert hit 134 F, considered the highest measured temperature on Earth.
Palm Springs in Southern California hit a record high temperature of 120 F Saturday.
Las Vegas late Saturday afternoon tied the all-time record high of 117 F, the National Weather Service said.
In Southern California, a brush fire sparked by a burning big rig in eastern San Diego County forced evacuations of two Native American reservations Saturday.
In north-central Arizona, Yavapai County on Saturday lifted an evacuation warning for Black Canyon City, an unincorporated town 43 miles north of Phoenix, after a fire in nearby mountains no longer posed a threat.
A wildfire in southeast Washington grew to almost 60 square miles as it blackened grass and timber while it moved into the Umatilla National Forest.
In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little declared a wildfire emergency Friday and mobilized the state’s National Guard to help fight fires sparked after lightning storms swept across the droughtstricken region.