Authorities in Northern California arrested a man after allegations he deliberately set a car ablaze and consequently sparked the state's largest fire of the year.
A witness alleged that 42-year-old Ronnie Stout lit his mother's vehicle aflame Wednesday, July 24, and pushed it off an embankment near Chico's Bidwell Park, The Washington Post reported.
"She saw him get into the vehicle, do something in the vehicle, get out of the vehicle, and then push the flaming vehicle down the embankment," District Attorney Michael L. Ramsey told media members Thursday. " … We are here today because of that."
According to the latest updates from Cal Fire, the Park Fire has swelled to 164,286 acres across Butte and Tehama Counties and is 0% contained. It is over four times larger than California's second-largest fire of 2024 and is the state's largest wildfire in three years.
The department has deployed 1,633 personnel to combat the conflagration that has already damaged 134 structures. No fatalities have been reported, though the Post noted that more than 4,400 residents are under evacuation orders and that two people have sustained minor injuries.
Cal Fire's X account wrote the blaze "exploded from a 400-acre fire to a more than 71,000-acre inferno consuming everything in its path" after the first night. Washington Post meteorologist Matthew Cappucci added that it has also produced several fire tornadoes and a smoke plume over 5 miles tall.
Experts have predicted strong gusts and dry conditions until Friday evening, causing the National Weather Service to issue a Red Flag warning for critical fire weather. Though the cause of the fire was unnatural, human activity has also likely compounded its severity.
Our dependence on planet-warming gases has contributed to increasingly intense and frequent extreme weather events like droughts and heatwaves, creating more dry vegetation in a state already susceptible to devastating wildfires.
"The fire quickly began to outpace our resources because of the dry fuels, the hot weather, the low humidities, and the wind," Butte County fire chief Garrett Sjolund said at a news conference Thursday.
That makes climate-conscious decisions that reverse Earth's overheating, even small moves like ditching single-use water bottles and plastic food containers or vacationing responsibly, all the more pertinent. Most importantly, though, is supporting actions to tackle wildfires and high-polluting businesses — and to avoid mixing fires with dry areas.
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