A burning car that authorities say was pushed into a gully less than a week ago sparked what is now one of the largest wildfires in California history. As of Monday, officials say the Park Fire has grown to more than 368,000 acres — making it the sixth-largest ever in the state.
In CalFire’s latest update Monday morning, officials said the Park Fire had grown to 368,256 acres and was at 12% containment. That size — about 575 square miles — is almost half the size of Rhode Island , more than 12 times bigger than San Francisco County and slightly larger than the city of Los Angeles .
According to CalFire, the Park Fire now ranks between the Creek Fire of 2020, which burned 379,895 acres, and the LNU Lightning Complex Fire of the same year that burned 363,220 acres. The August Complex Fire, also in 2020, remains the largest in state history at more than 1 million acres burned.
Four counties — Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama — have been impacted by the ongoing Park Fire . More than 100 structures have been destroyed, officials said. More than 4,000 other buildings remain threatened by the fire, which has not caused any known injuries or fatalities to civilians or firefighters so far, according to officials.
After days of what CalFire described as “rapid growth,” when it exploded to cover tens and then hundreds of thousands of acres, Sunday brought cooler temperatures that helped reduce some of the fire’s extreme behavior and allowed responders to “actively combat the fire outside of the National Forest lands.” However, there was also less smoke on Sunday, causing a “warmer climate around the fire which has led to increased fire activity,” officials said.
The blaze has sparked fire tornadoes and reached Lassen Volcanic National Park , which is now closed. The park said on Facebook on Saturday that the fire was approaching its western edge “three years after the Dixie Fire consumed much of the eastern portion.”
“Staff are scrambling to save historic artifacts stored in the 1927 Loomis Museum,” the park said.
Christopher Apel and his brother-in-law Bruce Hey told CBS Sacramento that their family has lived in the Cohasset area for decades and that they had people staying on their adjacent properties who had survived the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 84 people in the same region where the Park Fire is burning.
“Everything is burning,” Apel said.
“I tried to outrun it,” Hey added, saying he burned his left arm while evacuating.
“I wouldn’t have gotten burned if I hadn’t rolled down the window to look in the rearview mirror,” he said. “I was right in the middle of it and I was trying to put it in reverse.”
Julie Yarbough , a former news anchor and reporter for CBS Los Angeles, watched her home burn down in real-time through a video feed of her home security camera.
“Our house is gone, their house is OK,” she says of the aftermath in her neighborhood. “The house next to it you can see it’s gone.”
She said she doesn’t think the full blow of the loss has sunk in yet.
“It really is almost a numbness,” she told CBS Sacramento. “It’s surreal.”
