As drought conditions worsen and hot weather intensifies, firefighters across the west are fighting numerous wildfires.
The wildfire that was raging in southern Oregon near the California border grew to 600 kilometers, prompting evacuations.
With conditions expected to be dry, windy and temperatures well above the average, firefighters are unlikely to receive much relief over the next few days. Sunday’s announcement by authorities indicated that they will shift more firefighters to work overnight to make it easier to fight fires and construct containment lines.
California is currently facing its biggest wildfire of the year. It’s burning north of Lake Tahoe. The Beckwourth Complex Fire reached 348 km in size and was contained by firefighters.
California’s power officials are asking people to conserve energy Monday in an effort to avoid outages. Many parts of California and Nevada are currently under excessive heat warnings.
According to the National Weather Service, Death Valley, California reached 53 degrees Celsius Sunday. It was forecast that it will reach this temperature Monday.
Further north, officials from British Columbia, a western Canadian state, said that more than 300 active fires were currently burning, an increase of 36 over the previous two days.