INTERNATIONAL – A wave of “extreme heat” is hitting tens of millions of Americans this weekend, with many temperature records expected in the central and northeast and a wildfire spreading alarmingly in California.
The “Oak Fire”, described as “explosive” by the authorities, broke out this Friday, July 22 in Mariposa County, near Yosemite National Park and its giant sequoias. It has already moved some 4,800 acres, destroying ten properties and damaging five others, according to a bulletin Saturday from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Several roads were cut and several areas were ordered to evacuate, while the fire, of “extreme activity” and fought by more than 500 firefighters, was not under control on Saturday, according to the same source.
Officials quoted by the newspaper Los Angeles Times estimated that it would probably take a week to contain it.
More than 6,000 people were evacuated, according to a spokesperson for the California fire department, adding that employees from various departments were flocking from all over the state to lend a hand.
State of emergency declared
California Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed emergency state” Saturday in Mariposa County, due to a situation of “extreme danger to the safety of life and property”. This allows in particular to release funding.
According to a climatologist from the University of California at Los Angeles, Daniel Swain, the fire “spread significantly in almost all directions”, “in a context of high fuel load and extreme drought”. “The series of relatively small, non-destructive wildfires that have plagued California so far this season appear to be over,” he added on Twitter.
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One interesting & complicated aspect of #OakFire‘s initial hours: it spread significantly in nearly every direction. There is roughly NW to SE oriented axis of max spread, but has burned aggressively both up & down slope amid heavy fuel loading & extreme drought. #CAwx#CAfirehttps://t.co/pM2ZtqCCtO
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) July 23, 2022
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The American West has already experienced forest fires of exceptional magnitude and intensity in recent years, with a very marked lengthening of the fire season, a phenomenon that scientists attribute to climate change.
Nationwide heat wave
This fire is one of the most dramatic consequences of the heat wave affecting the United States this weekend, in a localized area between California and Oregon to the west but much more extensively in the center and northeast.
If temperatures in these two regions are expected to peak on Sunday at the earliest, stifling heat was already felt in the capital Washington DC, where the temperature flirted with the symbolic bar of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). A threshold that it should reach or exceed on Sunday for the first time in years. New York was not spared, with temperatures close to 35 degrees.
The heat wave has already led to an increase in the number of calls to the emergency services for discomfort related to high temperatures. “Heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States. It far exceeds any other nature-related cause of death,” Joseph Kralicek, director of the Tulsa, Oklahoma-area emergency management agency, told CNN.
Climate change is here
This week, US President Joe Biden again underscored the “clear and immediate danger” posed by climate change, “an existential threat to our nation and the world”. But its room for maneuver is limited in Congress and by the Supreme Court.
The planet has already recorded several heat waves this year, such as in July in Western Europe or in India in March-April. Their multiplication is an unmistakable sign of climate change, according to scientists.
In June 2021, an extremely rare “heat dome” wreaked havoc across the west coast of the United States and Canada, killing more than 500 people and causing major fires, with temperatures approaching 50 degrees.
See also on Le HuffPost: Fires in Gironde: Macron promises “a major project to rebuild” the forest
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