Northern California’s Park fire expands with no end or relief in sight
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Sunday, July 28. I’m your host, Andrew J. Campa. Here’s what you need to know to start your weekend:
- Northern California’s Park fire grows in size and power.
- Paris shined in a spectacular Olympic opening ceremony.
- San Diego’s best 23 restaurants and bars for your weekend getaway.
- And here’s today’s e-newspaper
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California’s largest fire roars with no relief in sight
The catalyst behind this year’s largest fire is a burning car that authorities said a Chico man pushed down a 60-foot embankment into a gully last week.
The vehicle — engulfed in flames — ended up in Chico’s Bidwell Park. The fire then quickly spread.
Authorities arrested the suspect, Ronnie Dean Stout II, the next day, Thursday.
Cal Fire reports that the blaze had scorched more than 350,000 acres across Northern California’s Butte and Tehama counties. It’s 10% contained.
The perfect storm of fires
Experts say the fire’s explosive growth is due to a perfect storm of hot, dry conditions, combustible vegetation and a landscape that hasn’t burned in decades. Combine those elements with the fire’s remote terrain, which has made it challenging for crews to gain access to the blaze’s swelling perimeter, and the firefight could be long and arduous.
“This is really the first fire in the past several years in California that I would call extraordinary — and that’s not a good thing,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA, said in a briefing.
On Thursday, footage captured by AlertCalifornia wildfire cameras appeared to show the blaze spewing tornado-like vortices, sometimes referred to as fire whirls or firenados.
“At this point the fire is kind of creating its own weather, and that can be pretty unpredictable,” said Courtney Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Really big, explosive wildfires can create thunderstorms; they can make whirling fire plumes that can mimic tornadoes.”
Swain said it is almost certain to become several times larger than it currently is, and will probably be a several-hundred-thousand-acre fire before it is contained.
Path of destruction
The fire’s rapid rate of spread has so far marched it north and east — stretching across northern Butte County and a growing portion of Tehama County — into a relatively remote mixture of grass, brush and timber and away from the threatened communities of Cohasset and Forest Ranch.
The fire, however, has already carved a path of destruction. Chief Garrett Sjolund, of Cal Fire’s Butte County unit, said “numerous structures” have been burned, including 134 buildings destroyed and 4,000 under threat.
Officials are worried about the community of Cohasset, where they initially feared a repeat of the 2018 Camp fire, which razed the nearby community of Paradise and killed 85 people — the deadliest wildfire on record in California. During that blaze, dozens of people were trapped on the area’s limited roadways while trying to escape.
About 4,000 residents have been evacuated from Cohasset, Forest Ranch and parts of northeast Chico, along with several rural areas in southern Tehama County.
The area was under a red flag warning, signaling dangerous weather that supports rapid fire grow, both Thursday and Friday.
That pattern has pushed flames into wilderness that has been untouched by fire for decades, if not longer — making it ripe with thicker vegetation and dead and dying brush, which ignites easily and fast.
Residents from the Chico area are watching the Park fire’s movements with anxiety.
“It’s been a pretty restless time for us,” said Don Hankins, a professor of geography and planning at Chico State, who is also on the Butte County Fire Safe Council.
What’s the outlook?
The days and weeks ahead are likely to see more acreage added to the fire as crews contend with rugged, volcanic topography and persistent hot and dry conditions.
“The outlook is that it’s not going to be easily contained,” Hankins said. “We’ve got a long season ahead of us before the rainy season comes, and that’s really going to be the ultimate thing to curtail any of these fires that are happening across the West right now.”
For more on the fire, please check out the reporting of journalists Hayley Smith and Grace Toohey.
The week’s biggest stories
Olympic Games
- Review: The Olympics’ opening ceremony shined with best of Paris and France, but failed as TV.
- How to watch, medal count and top contenders for gold.
- The first couple of U.S. fencing credit each other for their Olympic successes.
- Swimming has a diversity problem. Can this generation of Olympians change that?
Labor and strikes
- California Supreme Court upholds Proposition 22, ending legal saga over status of gig drivers.
- Video game actors are on strike. Here’s what that means.
Election 2024
- Beyoncé vs. Kid Rock: Gender roles are back on the ballot as Trump-Harris race takes shape.
- Is Kamala Harris too cautious? Or are we missing her bigger strength?
- From Let’s Go Brandon to Let’s Go Brenda. Trump merch sellers say they’ll be just fine after Biden exit.
- Prosecutors urge judge not to toss out Trump’s hush money conviction on immunity claim.
Homelessness
- Taking cue from Supreme Court, Breed to launch aggressive homeless sweeps in San Francisco.
- Newsom orders California agencies to clear homeless camps, but the impact remains a question.
- Homeless encampment cleanups do little to change numbers of people on the street, study finds.
Environmental news and fires
- California will host a billion-dollar “hydrogen hub.” What it means for our energy future.
- Is this the solution to California’s soaring insurance prices due to wildfire risk?
- Tropical moisture mixes with California’s heat, driving storms, flood potential, fire risks.
- 1,500 crushed cars fuel fierce blaze in Antelope Valley.
More big stories
- Benched by the NBA, Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav faces tough questions.
- The summer of ’82 changed sci-fi cinema forever.
- Don’t feed the meter. Save money and buy a parking permit at these L.A. and O.C. beaches.
- Opinion: Inglewood needs the people mover, Rep. Waters.
- He runs the graveyard of L.A.’s failed restaurants — and tends to the ghosts.
- New owners on Rodeo Drive betting big on luxury retailers.
- L.A. child-care industry in tailspin, hit with disruption as transition kindergarten grows.
- Column: 99 years after the Scopes “monkey trial,” religious fundamentalism still infects our schools.
- Column: How Shohei Ohtani could snap the Dodgers out of their complacency at the trade deadline.
- Comic-Con is pop culture’s beating heart. Comics creators made it so.
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Column One
Column One is The Times’ home for narrative and long-form journalism. Here’s a great piece from this week:
Even among Mexican cartel bosses — a bunch known for lavish wealth, daring escapes and extreme brutality — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada stood out. He was a longtime partner of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and together they built the Sinaloa cartel into a global empire. Taking on an almost mythic status, he is rumored to have judges, generals and even presidents of Mexico in his pocket. And despite more than four decades on the run as one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, he had never spent a single night in jail.
More great reads
- Juixxe the viral TikToker takes on street vendor rights and dreams.
- As the world arrives for the Olympics, Paris food goes local. How can L.A. compete?
- The psychic, sex workers and the scam: “These grifters are unbelievable at their skill.”
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.
For your weekend
Going out
- 👟 Join journalist Jaclyn Cosgrove in exploring Los Angeles’ top 10 staircase walks.
- 😱 The final day of the spooktacular Midsummer Scream in Long Beach gets underway, starting at 11 a.m.
- 📽️ The Taiwanese American coming of age film “Didi” debuts this week.
Staying in
- 📕 Author Dinaw Mengestu’s first novel in a decade, “Someone Like Us,” is out and focuses on the Ethiopian American experience.
- 🥐 Here’s the Paris Olympics TV schedule for Sunday.
- 🧑🍳 Happy National Milk Chocolate Day. Here’s Hershey’s top s’mores recipe.
- ✏️ Get our free daily crossword puzzle, Sudoku, word search and arcade games.
L.A. Affairs
Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage.
At 77, I had given up. After two failed marriages and years of unsuccessful dating, I accepted what seemed to be my fate: single for almost 40 years and single for however many remained. You don’t get it all, I told myself. I was grateful for family, friends and work. Life settled into what felt like order. Until Ty.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Andrew J. Campa, reporter
Carlos Lozano, news editor
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