Fire tornado rips through California as Park fire triples in size

A rare fire tornado has ripped through bushland in northern California, as the state’s largest wildfire this year explodes in size.

The Park fire, which was started on Wednesday, has burned more than 307,000 acres of land north-east of Chico, and was 0% contained on Saturday morning, the state’s fire agency Cal Fire said.

A 42-year-old man was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of setting the blaze by rolling a burning car into a gully near Alligator Hole in Butte County.

Footage obtained by BBC News shows the “firenado” – a swirling vortex of flames and ash formed in intense heat and high winds – twisting through bushland.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday declared a state of emergency in Butte and Tehama counties because of the Park fire.

“We are using every available tool to protect lives and property as our fire and emergency response teams work around the clock to combat these challenging fires,” he said in a statement.

The wildfire has forced mandatory evacuations in Butte, where California’s deadliest blaze, the Camp Fire, killed more than 80 people in 2018.

The 400-strong population of Cohasset has already been moved as the fire burns largely out of control.

Cal Fire said that 134 structures had been destroyed, while 4,200 were under threat.

The Park fire has grown since it sparked on Wednesday from about 1,400 acres, spreading by Thursday into California’s Central Valley.

Nearly 2,500 personnel are trying to contain the fire, using 16 helicopters and multiple air tankers dumping water from the sky when conditions allow.

Officials arrested Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, and accused him of “calmly leaving the area by blending in with the other citizens who were in the area and fleeing the rapidly evolving fire” that he had set. He is being held in jail without bail as authorities determine what charges he will face.

A woman who answered the door of the mobile home listed as his home address in Chico told the San Francisco Chronicle that prosecutors “are trying to make him the scapegoat”.

“They’re saying he did it intentionally, but he didn’t. The car caught on fire,” the unidentified woman said, before refusing to answer further questions.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for northern Sacramento Valley, and warned high winds and low humidity on Friday could combine to “cause new fire starts and ongoing wildfires to… grow rapidly and dangerously in size and intensity”.

The LA Times reported that the fire was threatening to engulf the Ishi Wilderness and Lassen foothills – areas untouched by fire in almost a century and therefore filled with a large amount of fuel for the blaze.

The biggest current wildfire in the US, however, is across the border in Oregon. The Durkee fire has burned at least 288,000 acres, and was 20% contained by Friday evening.

Sparked by lightning on 17 July, it has scorched ranch land and killed cattle by the hundreds. It is threatening several towns.

Canada is also battling large wildfires, one of which has destroyed up to half of the historic town of Jasper in Alberta, and large areas of the Jasper National Park. Rain on Friday aided the hundreds of firefighters called in to fight the blaze.