YERICA, Aug. 2 (BNA) Two bodies were found inside a burnt car on the path of a wildfire in a northern California forest near the Oregon border, authorities said Monday, as crews battled the fire for a fourth day. Take advantage of the rainfall in the area.
Since the McKinney Rapid Fire broke out on Friday, the McKinney Rapid Fire has forced nearly 2,000 people to flee while destroying homes and vital infrastructure, most of them in Siskiyou County, home to Klamath National Forest, according to a statement from Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday, Reuters reported. .
Authorities have not yet determined the extent of the property losses, but the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in an update published Monday that more than 4,900 homes are threatened by fire.
Cal Fire reports that the fire, already the largest in California this year, charred 55,493 acres (22,457 ha) of drought-stressed lumber and remained 0% content.
Cal Fire said smaller wildfires in the same county had caused just over 2,700 acres combined as of Monday and had driven at least 200 people from their homes.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that the two bodies of the McKinney fire were found on Sunday in a car parked in a residential driveway west of the Klamath River area. The agency said it would not have more information until the next of kin are notified.
Forensic investigators in white protective suits sifted through debris from the vehicle and collected the remains for identification. A Sheriff’s spokesperson at the scene said skid marks were found on the driveway.
“It looks like they were trying to escape the fire and likely couldn’t see the exit,” the spokesperson said, adding that the car apparently crashed into the driveway gate and “fallen off the bridge.”
Elsewhere along the highway running through the fire zone, an Oregon volunteer search and rescue team with cadaver dogs combed the grounds of other burnt property for signs of possible additional victims.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. But the fire broke out in record heat in an area where dry trees and vegetation had already created a high-burning fuel layer.
Prolonged drought and unusually warm weather have fueled increasingly frequent and extreme wildfire behavior in California and elsewhere across the western United States in recent years, a pattern scientists say is symptomatic of human-caused climate change.
US Forest Service officials said fire crews took advantage of a low-pressure weather system that delivered rain to much of the fire area Sunday evening and continued to douse the blaze in the area on Monday, helping to put out the flames.
But the weather system itself also held the potential for thunderstorms, and with them choppy winds and lightning strikes that could spark new fires.
“The only thing we’ve learned about thunderstorms is that we can’t predict what’s going to happen,” said Forest Service spokesman Adrian Freeman.
Meanwhile, crews focused much of their work on carving fire containment lines along the Klamath River Pass to create a protective barrier near the towns of Yerika and Fort Johns, Freeman said.
A layer of thick smoke trapped near the ground due to low pressure, a phenomenon called a “reflection layer,” has also hampered the growth of fires since Sunday evening, although low visibility halted firefighting aircraft operations, according to the Forest Service.
Newsom on Sunday declared a state of emergency in Siskiyou County, a sparsely populated area larger than Connecticut, expediting the availability of the government’s disaster response and relief.
Among those evacuating from the fire was Harleen Althea Schwander, 81, an artist who moved to the area just a month ago to be near her son and daughter-in-law.
“I am very sad. My house is gone, all my furniture, all my clothes, shoes, coats and shoes. Everything is gone,” Schwander told Reuters on Sunday outside an American Red Cross evacuation shelter.
The McKinney fire was the second major wildfire in California this season. The Oak Fire near Yosemite National Park is 72% contained after more than 19,244 acres were blackened, according to Cal Fire on its website.
MI