About 4,000 people were forced from their homes in California due to a large wildfire that continued yesterdayFriday, to increase dangerously despite the intervention of 1,700 firefighters, causing concerns to the authorities.

From Wednesday afternoon that broke out in the northern part of California, the fire that was named “Park Fire” It had burned more than 720 square kilometers of forest land and 134 buildings as of yesterday and remained uncontained, according to the California Forestry and Fire Protection Service CalFire.

The fire was spreading at pedestrian speed in a rural area three hours’ drive northeast of San Francisco.

Last night the California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in two counties threatened by the flames, to speed up the action of the authorities.

The fire forced about 4,000 people to move away from their homes in the villages Cohasset and Forest Ranges, after its outbreak in the small town of Chico.

This massive wildfire is bringing back bad memories: part of the city of Paradise, where 85 people died in 2018 in the deadliest wildfire in California history, is on alert and residents must be prepared for any eventuality.

“You have to be ready to go,” said Thursday Cory Honiathe county sheriff Beaut. “If the fire spreads, I cannot promise or guarantee that we will be able to save your life.”

“This is a changing situation”, he noted yesterday in his new statements, pointing out that the fire “passed” the village Cohasset during the night.

Residents who escaped the flames described to local media their frantic escape via the only accessible forest road in the area, with their car headlights unable to illuminate the roadway due to thick smoke.

“It was very worrying to know that this was the only way to escape,” said Mr Nick Shelton in the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“I feel like I’m paralyzed,” she told CBS Julia Yarboughwhose house was burnt down by the flames.

This fire was caused by arson, according to the authorities. A 42-year-old man was taken into custody Thursday morning after he was seen pushing “a car that had caught fire into a canyon,” according to the local prosecutor’s office.

The suspect was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2003. His criminal record includes sexual assault of a minor and armed robbery.

As for the front of the fire, reinforcements had been sent to many parts of California, while the weather service had issued an alert for yesterday, because of the strong winds that carried the risk of the fire spreading.

“We are observing an extreme expansion north” of the fire, explained yesterday Billy Cfire chief.

Firefighters focus the main part of their resources on the protection of residential areas.

“We are hoping that weather conditions will improve significantly from this weekend with cooler temperatures and an associated increase in humidity, which will allow us to have easier access to the perimeter (of the fire) rather than remaining on the defensive,” he noted.

“It’s really the first fire in years in California that I would say is behaving out of the ordinary, and that’s not good,” commented Thursday night Daniel Swain, an expert on extreme phenomena at UCLA.

Swain compared this large fire to those that burned California in the 2010s, which were among the worst in the history of this western US state.

“The only good news is that there are no major cities in the direct path of the fire,” he added, adding that the fire could continue to rage “for weeks, even months.”

After two wet winters, the western US has experienced several heat waves since June, which dry out new vegetation from the rains and favor the spread of wildfires.

“We broke (temperature) records (…) and this happened in a very large zone, stretching from the northwest of Mexico to the west of Canada,” the expert noted.

Hundreds of wildfires are still raging across this zone, particularly in Oregon in the US and Canada.

Recurring heat waves are an indicator of global warming linked to climate change caused by humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, scientists say.