Fires in the US destroy several Oregon towns and authorities fear high death toll

Satellite photo of the West Coast of the United States, Wednesday.

Smoke from the fires covers the entire line from Washington to Southern California.AGUSTIN PAULLIER / AFP

An unprecedented fire season in Oregon has destroyed five towns in the southern part of the state in the last few hours.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Wednesday that she fears too many deaths.

"This could be the largest loss of life and property to fire in our history," Brown said, as emergency crews continue to carry out rescues and families begin to report their missing.

The fires span the entire state from north to south.

According to Brown, the towns that have suffered the most and are practically destroyed are Detroit, in the north, Blue River and Vida, near Eugene, and Phoenix and Talent, near Medford, in the south.

A combination of sustained high temperatures and strong winds has made the western state the center of this summer's fires.

Governor Brown warned that thousands of people may be evacuated from their homes in the next few hours, as the wind does not stop and "continues to push the fire towards the towns."

Meanwhile, California issued an order to close the 18 protected National Forests that it has due to the extraordinary conditions of dryness, heat and wind that are fueling more than two dozen fires throughout the state and that have already broken the historical record of hectares burned.

One of them is in the Los Angeles National Forest, northeast of the city, and on Tuesday night the entire population received an alert to be prepared in case evacuations need to be made.

However, the wind gave a lull for the night and the fire had barely advanced Wednesday.

In the Sierra Nevada, northeast of Fresno, the so-called Creek Fire continues to burn uncontrollably, a fire that has already consumed 66,000 hectares of heavily wooded area.

It is estimated that it has burned some 360 ​​structures and threatens more than 5,000.

Evacuation orders and roadblocks affect large areas around Fresno.

The National Guard has had to carry out several helicopter rescues of groups of dozens of people trapped in the fire when they were spending Labor Day weekend in the area.

On the night from Monday to Tuesday they carried out up to eight rescue missions.

Authorities' biggest concern Wednesday was a new fire that erupted the day before around Oroville, northeast of Sacramento.

The fire agency says it has burned around 100,000 hectares at full speed and threatened the towns of Paradise and Concow, which were devastated in the 2018 fire and where the highest number of deaths (85) was recorded in a fire in California.

The 28 active fires in California have forced the evacuation of 64,000 people at one time or another, a CalFire spokesperson told the

.

This Wednesday, the sky over the San Francisco Bay, which dawned completely intense red, contributed to the feeling of apocalypse.

Its residents shared photos of the sky on social media.

On Tuesday, the governor of California recalled that the fire situation in California worsens year by year due to the hardening of weather conditions in the last decade.

"I have no patience for climate change deniers," Gavin Newsom said.