Fire, Wildfire | featured news

Climate Central points out what should already be obvious: As it’s getting hotter, we’re seeing more wildfires — and the wildfires are getting bigger. Even as the 2012 wildfire season continues — there are nearly 1 million acres actively burning right now — the site parsed the data to pick out long-term trends linking fires, size, and heat. Here are some of the key findings from its report...

A forest fire that continues to burn in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Azusa forced the evacuation of several campgrounds and other facilities that typically attract up to 12,000 visitors on Labor Day weekend, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman said.

"The irony here is that the argument for setting these areas aside as national forests and parks was, to a large extent, to protect them from fire," Pyne says. "Instead, over time they became the major habitat for free-burning fire."

Two cousins who admitted to accidentally starting the largest wildfire in Arizona history by leaving a still-smoldering campfire unattended were each sentenced to 48 hours in jail on Wednesday and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. Caleb Malboeuf, 27, and David Malboeuf, 25, were also placed on five years' probation by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Aspey in Flagstaff, Arizona, for the raging wildfire that torched 840 square miles in eastern Arizona and New Mexico last summer, according to assistant U.S. attorney Patrick Schneider.

California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in three Northern California counties on Wednesday after a wildfire that has already destroyed 64 homes advanced with 75-foot flames on a tiny community at the doorstep of a national park.

Dozens of buildings, many of them likely homes, have been destroyed in recent days in a fire burning outside the Northern California community of Manton, fire officials said Tuesday night. Fire crews assessing the rural area determined Tuesday that 50 buildings had been destroyed, state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said. The count included buildings burned since the fire began, but officials did not say when the structures were destroyed.

As hundreds of residents in Washington and California were allowed to return to homes once threatened by major wildfires, some people were told to evacuate as encroaching blazes neared Idaho towns.

Lorie Winmill grew teary as she loaded her vehicle and prepared her 4-year-old granddaughter to stay with relatives as a wildfire burned closer to this small town in central Idaho.

Southern California wildfires are threatening dozens of homes after burning through more than 19 square miles of brush in the midst of a heat wave.

Crews made progress overnight against a Northern California wildfire that has grown to more than 4 1/2 square miles and forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes. The Wye Fire east of the community of Clearlake Oaks in Lake County was 25 percent contained early Monday morning. State fire officials say it is threatening 480 homes in Spring Valley and has already destroyed three structures. It was not immediately clear whether those were homes or outbuildings.