More than 300,000 acres are burning across six states across the western United States on Sunday as the region battled yet another brutal heat wave …
More than 300,000 acres are burning across six states across the western United States on Sunday as the region battled yet another brutal heat wave that shattered records and strained power grids. The largest, the so-called Bootleg Fire, burned across 143,607 acres in Oregon and was 0% contained. Officials in neighboring state California asked all residents to reduce power consumption quickly after the fire knocked out interstate power lines, preventing up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity from flowing into the state. “The Bootleg Fire will see the potential for extreme growth today,” the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon, said on Twitter, fueled by extreme drought and temperatures near 100 that aren’t expected to subside until midweek. “The fire behavior we are seeing on the Bootleg Fire is among the most extreme you can find and firefighters are seeing conditions they have never seen before,“ fire incident commander Al Lawson said. Further south, the equally formidable Beckwourth Complex Fire measured 83,926 acres and was 8% contained in California, edging along the border with Nevada.
