The fires in the United States force the evacuation of half a million people from the State of Oregon

Neighbors of Salem, Oregon, cross a street this Thursday surrounded by smoke from the fire that surrounds the city CARLOS BARRIA / Reuters

The wave of wildfires that shakes the northwestern United States has already killed at least a dozen people in California, four in Oregon and one in Washington.

Oregon authorities say more than half a million people have had to leave their homes to be safe from the flames.

Kate Brown, the governor of this state, has recognized that the number of deceased may increase.

"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.

So far this year, more than 12,500 square kilometers have been burned from northern Oregon to the US border with Mexico, according to

.

Oregon (population 4.2 million) has never experienced such a fire season.

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

The phenomenon is repeated every year in California: winter rains that cause an excess of weeds;

extreme temperatures in summer and dryness that completely eliminate humidity, and gusts of strong winds in September and October that cause fires throughout the state.

California's fire resources are many, and yet this year they are on edge.

The wind does not stop and threatens to continue taking lives ahead.

Like that of a 12-year-old boy and her grandmother in the town of Detroit.

Governor Brown asked the entire State to be "on alert" and warned that the danger is going to last all week.

Authorities are investigating whether the fire that started Tuesday outside the city of Ashland, known as the Almeda fire and one of the deadliest in the area, was started.

"We have good reason to believe there was a human element," said Rich Tyler, a spokesman for the state fire marshal's office.

"We are going to proceed as a criminal investigation until we have reason to believe it was otherwise."

Oregon has asked the White House to declare a national emergency, which would allow mobilizing federal resources in firefighting operations.

The resources of this state (with 4.2 million inhabitants), are at the limit, according to its governor.

On Wednesday night there was still no response from the Trump administration.

California devoured again by flames

Meanwhile, California, which already has a dozen deaths, issued an order to close the 18 protected natural spaces 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 already they have broken the historical record for hectares burned.

The figure already exceeds one million hectares, 20 times more than what was burned last year, when the fight against the fire was relatively successful.

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 forested area.

It is estimated that it has burned some 360 ​​homes 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 assures that 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 registered in a fire in California.

On Wednesday night, the

county

, Kory Honea, who already had to deal with that tragedy, confirmed that they have found three bodies related to the fire in two different places.

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

. On Wednesday and Thursday, the sky over San Francisco Bay contributed to the doom and gloom, which dawned completely fiery red from a nearby small fire mixing with city fog. 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, which causes more and more rain and increasingly dryness in a state accustomed to stability exceptional in climate. "I have no patience for climate change deniers," Gavin Newsom said.