California is facing its largest fire of the season, with hundreds of thousands of acres engulfed in flames spreading over multiple counties. Authorities believe the fire was man-made after a suspect was spotted pushing a flaming car into a ravine. NBC News’ Steve Patterson has the fires besieging the West Coast.
The largest wildfire currently burning in California grew to more than 350,000 acres Saturday, but there was hope that progress in containing it, as well as a cool-down, will help defeat it. The Park Fire was started on Wednesday by a man who pushed a flaming vehicle into a gulley filled with dried brush at a park in Chico, authorities allege. The blaze erupted and quickly doubled in acreage and then doubled again amid hot temperatures, dry brush and gusty wind.
That blaze east of Bakersfield started July 24 on federal land and has burned 31,000 acres, the governor's office said. Current fires in California have burned 626,600 acres so far, Cal Fire said. Nationwide there were 102 large active wildfires, the vast majority in the West, blamed for charring more than 2 million acres, the National Interagency Fire Center said. Twenty-one wildfires in the United States were the cause of evacuation orders, it said.
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