NPR

'I Heard Popping And Houses Blowing Up': Unprecedented Wildfires Rage On West Coast

The 2020 fire season is off to a staggering start, far outpacing last year. Thousands of people along the West Coast are under evacuation orders, and more red flag warnings were issued Wednesday.
Butte County firefighters watch as flames tower over their truck at the Bear fire in Oroville, Calif., on Wednesday. In a record-breaking year for wildfires, hundreds of people in California have been evacuated by helicopter and tens of thousands have been plunged into darkness by power outages due to the extreme fire risk.

Intense wildfires are ravaging large swaths of the West Coast, prompting thousands of people to flee parts of Oregon and forcing power outages in California, where fires have already burned a record of more than 2.3 million acres this year. Fires are burning from Washington state to Southern California.

In southern Oregon, people in parts of Medford, Talent and nearby communities were ordered to evacuate the area immediately on Tuesday, with officials citing the imminent

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