Thousands of Oregon evacuees shelter as wildfires rage on

Thousands of Oregon evacuees shelter as wildfires rage on

PanARMENIAN.Net - Thousands of evacuees displaced by deadly wildfires in Oregon, U.S. settled into a second week of life in shelters and car camping on Tuesday, September 15 as fire crews battled on, and search teams scoured the ruins of incinerated homes for the missing, Reuters reports.

With state resources stretched to their limit, U.S. President Donald Trump approved a request from Oregon’s governor for a federal disaster declaration, bolstering U.S. government assistance for emergency response and relief efforts.

Dozens of fires have charred some 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of tinder-dry brush, grass and woodlands in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, ravaging several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 34 people.

Eight deaths have been confirmed during the past week in Oregon, which became the latest and most concentrated hot spot in a larger summer outbreak of fires across the entire western United States. The Pacific Northwest was hardest hit.

The conflagrations, which officials and scientists have described as unprecedented in scope and ferocity, have also filled the region’s skies with smoke and soot, compounding a public health crisis already posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The fires roared to life in California in mid-August, and erupted across Oregon and Washington around Labor Day last week, many of them sparked by catastrophic lightning storms and stoked by record-breaking heat waves and bouts of howling winds.

Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
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