“The debate is over around climate change, just come to the state of California, observe it with your own eyes. It’s not an intellectual debate. It’s not even debatable any longer." 

"We’re experiencing what so many people predicted decades ago."

California Governor Gavin Newsom 

"It was like an unexpected solar eclipse. I certainly looked at the forecast the day before [and] they didn’t say: ‘Oh, and there’s a high likelihood that it will look like Mordor tomorrow'."

Alex Trope, resident psychiatrist, University of California in San Francisco

 

"We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across the state." 

"We are feeling the acute impacts of climate change."

Oregon Governor Kate Brown

Satellite imagery of smoke from wildfires in Northern California, Sept. 4-10, 2020. Source: NASA Worldview

Spencer Kimball | CNBC

Fierce, wind-driven wildfires are erupting in all American West Coast states, destroying thousands of homes, causing the deaths of an estimated fifteen people so far, according to state and local authorities. Three people died as a result of lightning-sparked fire in Northern California, another three reported killed in Oregon, while a one-year-old child died while his family frantically attempted to escape a blaze in Washington State.

It is the State of Oregon that has borne the brunt of close to a hundred major wildfires that have been ripping across western states. Three thousand firefighters are desperately attacking the two dozen wildfires in the state and coming up short on manpower as fires continue to erupt and spread, demonstrating just how impossible it is to cope with trying to restrain forces of nature run amok. Extremely dry conditions, heat, wind and lightning all conspire to wreak monumental havoc.

Five towns up and down the Cascade mountain range in Oregon have been destroyed. Areas of once-dependable cool, wet temperate forests which under normal conditions would be resistant to fire have suffered dehydration in the event of recent heatwaves and have as a result succumbed to the ravenous wildfires.

 

Oregon residents evacuate north along highway Highway 213 on September 9, 2020 near Oregon City, Oregon.

Nathan Howard | Getty Images

 

Search and rescue teams began east of Salem, Oregon to enter destroyed communities like Detroit to lead residents of the fire-ravaged area on mountain escapes when military helicopters dispatched to evacuate the town were unable to land. A burned-out car was discovered to be holding a dead 12-year-old boy and his dog, with his grandmother nowhere in sight, believed killed when flames engulfed their area west of Detroit, 80 kilometres south of Portland.

 

Hundreds of homes have been engulfed by flames fed by winds of up to 80 km/h, leading firefighters to focus their attention on evacuating residents as a first order of business, controlling the flames a secondary concern under the circumstances. The state, according to Oregon Governor Kate Brown, was facing a greater loss of lives from wildfires than ever before. The communities of Blue River and Vida in Lane County, and Phoenix and Talent in southern Oregon have been pretty well destroyed.

In this aerial view from a drone, homes destroyed by fire are shown on September 10, 2020 in Phoenix, Oregon. Hundreds of homes in the town have been lost due to wildfire.   David Ryder | Getty Images

Mass evacuations are the order of the day. Most of the city of Medford in southern Oregon's Marion county was ordered to evacuate or prepare to evacuate -- 82,000 residents -- as fires burned around the city itself. Small communities south of Phoenix were reduced to ashes, reported a Reuters photographer as he drove south on Interstate 5 toward Ashland.

On Wednesday, 64,000 people were under evacuation orders while fire crews battled 28 major fires in California. Roughly a third of the evacuees had been displaced north of Sacramento in Butte Country alone. And according to Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, the remains of three victims were discovered in two separate locations of the fire zone.

"It was terrifying. It was a beast. The thing is a beast."

"They're pretty devastated. She [80-year-old evacuee Hamilton is housing along with several evacuated families] just lost everything."

"I was able to take photos for her so at least she knows that it was gone. A lot of people don't know their houses are gone and they're wondering."

Nancy Hamilton, filmmaker, resident Berry Creek, California

A Coulson 737 firefighting tanker jet drops fire retardant to slow Bobcat Fire at the top of a major run up a mountainside in the Angeles National Forest on September 10, 2020 north of Monrovia, California.

David McNew | Getty Images