The largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park remained closed Saturday as firefighters battled a blaze that threatened the gathering of the iconic trees and forced hundreds of campers to evacuate.

The rest of the park in California remained open, though smoke that hung in the air obscured some of the most scenic vistas and views.

More than 500 mature sequoias were threatened in the Mariposa Grove but as of Saturday afternoon there were no reports of severe damage to any named trees, including the 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant. Some of the massive trunks were wrapped in fire-resistant foil for protection as the blaze burned out of control.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Beyond the trees, the small community of Wawona, which is surrounded by park and a campground, was under threat, with people ordered to leave their homes and campsites on Friday night.

The fire was proving difficult to contain, with firefighters throwing “every tactic imaginable" at it, said Nancy Phillipe, a Yosemite fire information spokesperson. That included air drops of fire retardant as well as the planned use of bulldozers to create fire lines, a tactic that's rarely used in a wilderness setting like Yosemite, Phillipe said.

The bulldozers would primarily be used to put in fire lines to protect Wawona, she said. About 600 to 700 people who were staying at the Wawona campground in tents, cabins and an historic hotel were ordered to leave.

Though firefighters were facing hot and dry conditions, they didn't have to contend with intense winds on Saturday, said Jeffrey Barlow, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. Given the relatively small size of the fire and minimal winds, smoke impacts were not expected to stretch far beyond the park, he said.

The giant sequoias, native in only about 70 groves spread along the western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada range, were once considered impervious to flames but have become increasingly vulnerable as wildfires fueled by a buildup of undergrowth from a century of fire suppression and drought exacerbated by climate change have become more intense and destructive.

Lightning-sparked wildfires over the past two years have killed up to a fifth of the estimated 75,000 large sequoias, which are the biggest trees by volume.

There was no obvious natural spark for the fire that broke out Thursday next to the park’s Washburn Trail, Phillipe said. Smoke was reported by visitors walking in the grove that reopened in 2018 after a $40 million renovation that took three years.

The fire had grown to about 1.9 square miles (4.8 square kilometers) by Saturday evening.

A fierce windstorm ripped through the grove a year-and-a-half ago and toppled 15 giant sequoias, along with countless other trees.

The downed trees, along with massive numbers of pines killed by bark beetles, provided ample fuel for the flames.

The park has used prescribed burns to clear brush around the sequoias, which helps protect them if flames spread farther into the grove.

Meanwhile, most evacuation orders were lifted Saturday in the Sierra foothills about 80 miles (128 kilometers) to the northwest of the Yosemite fire, where a fire broke out on July 4. The Electra Fire that began near Jackson was mostly contained, and only areas directly within the fire's perimeter remained under evacuation orders, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

RUIDOSO, NM — There’s a lot to love about the sleepy mountain town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, but life the last few years have been anything but simple for the service industry.

"After the pandemic hit, I mean, It was like, where did everybody go," said Chon Caswell, the general manager of two restaurants in town.

"Everything's short-term rentals, Airbnb. It's tough living for the backbone of this economy," he added.

"Just like everywhere in the United States, we're severely handicapped when it comes to workforce and one of the biggest contributing factors to that is housing," said Mayor Lynn Crawford.

It’s a similar story in tourism-driven places across the nation, but further hardship this town is facing may be able to change mindsets that were once against the idea of affordable housing.

In April, a wildfire wiped out around 200 homes in an area of town that primarily housed folks who were part of the local workforce. It's kicked off a scramble for affordable housing that reached a new need to re-evaluate zoning laws to allow more people to live on less land.

"The community's always been 100% for it until you pick a spot and then it's, well not, you can't do this. We don't want you to do that," said Crawford.

Changing neighbors’ minds about affordable housing is one of the biggest hurdles to its creation.

A 2019 Redfin study showed that home buyers and sellers are nearly twice as likely to oppose housing density in their neighborhoods than they are to support it and more than half support zoning policies that limit density while 27 percent support it.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition guesses that the country is short 7 million rental homes for low-income renters. That’s about 1 in 4 of all rental households nationwide.

"A lot of it is the narrative that's been put out the, that the people that live there are being brought in from outside the community, they're the dregs of our community," he said.

The data, though, disproves that stigma. The National Low Income Housing Coalition says building 100 affordable housing units generates $11.7 million in local income, $2.2 million in taxes and 161 local jobs in the first year alone.

Mayor Crawfoird says Ruidoso is beginning to see the necessity as well as the benefits of having affordable housing.

"What this fire has done and the devastation is put faces. These are some of our firemen that have lost their homes. These are people that work at the hospital. These are people that work at our restaurants, our grocery stores that stock your shelves. Those are the people that have been affected," said Crawford.

The village is working on several solutions including an enterprise fund for housing, tax credits and building modular homes. Crawford says this is possible because the state and local governments, as well as the community, are working together.

"We've been working on these plans constantly, but now some of the doors are opening and we're running through those and those people are working with us and we do appreciate everything," he said.

For business folks like Caswell, he hopes more communities change their perspective on affordable housing.

"Hopefully we can get a change of hearts and minds," he said.

A little bit of good news and a lot of luck coming out of a destructive wildfire burning near the California-Oregon border as a photojournalist saved a puppy wandering around the ruins of the McKinney Fire.

Jonathan Rivas said he arrived at the community of Klamath River early Saturday morning, just hours after the wildfire broke out where he said there was a lot of damage, with trees and homes burned.

Rivas said he was finishing filming one neighborhood when he heard yelping.

"I heard a yelp in the distance, but I didn't really know what it was, I thought it was an injured deer or one of the wildlife that's there," the AIO Filmz photojournalist said. "All of a sudden, this little puppy comes and runs up to me. I was super shocked to see that come from the rubble there."

The puppy was clearly excited to see Rivas in the video.

Watch the full rescue below

The puppy allowed Rivas to pick him up and put him in the back of his car.

"He was very excited, he was wagging his tail, I am talking to him like I'm talking to my dog, I picked him up, put him in the trunk of my car," Rivas said.

He gave him some water before dropping him off at a shelter.

Rivas posted the video on social media, where he found the puppy's family. The puppy has been reunited with its family.

"Reuniting it with their family and after hearing their story, it makes me feel good, I am just happy, I was at the right place at the right time," Rivas said.

WASHINGTON —

Thick, smoky air from Canadian wildfires made for days of misery in New York City and across the U.S. Northeast this week. But for much of the rest of the world, breathing dangerously polluted air is an inescapable fact of life — and death.

Almost the entire world breathes air that exceeds the World Health Organization's air-quality limits at least occasionally. The danger grows worse when that bad air is more persistent than the nightmarish shroud that hit the U.S. — usually in developing or newly industrialized nations. That's where most of the 4.2 million deaths blamed on outdoor air pollution occurred in 2019, the UN's health agency reported.

“Air pollution has no boundaries, and it is high time everyone comes together to fight it,” said Bhavreen Kandhari, the co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, a network of mothers pushing for clean air and climate action in a nation with some of the world's consistently worst air. “What we are seeing in the U.S. should shake us all."

“This is a severe air pollution episode in the U.S.,” said Jeremy Sarnat, a professor of environmental health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. "But it’s fairly typical for what millions and millions of people experience in other parts of the world.”

Last year, nine of the 10 cities with the highest annual average of fine particulate matter were in Asia — including six in India, according to air quality company IQAir, which aggregates readings from ground level monitoring stations worldwide.

Fine particulate matter, sometimes denoted as PM 2.5, refers to airborne particles or droplets of 2.5 microns or less. That’s far smaller than a human hair, and the particles can reach deep into lungs to cause eye, nose, throat and lung irritation and even affect heart function.

Sajjad Haider, a 31-year-old shopkeeper in Lahore, Pakistan, rides his motorbike to work daily. He wears a mask and goggles against frequent air pollution in the city of 11 million, but suffers from eye infections, breathing problems and chest congestion that get worse as smog grows in winter.

On his doctor's advice, he relies on hot water and steam to clear his chest, but said he cannot follow another bit of the doctor's advice: Don't go out on his motorbike if he wants to keep his health.

“I can't afford a car and I can't continue my business without a motorbike," said Haider.

Last year, Lahore had the world's highest average concentration of fine particulate matter at nearly 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air. By comparison, New York City’s concentration hit 303 at one point on Wednesday.

But New York's air typically falls well within healthy levels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for exposure is no more than 35 micrograms per day, and no more than 12 micrograms a day for longer-term exposure. New York’s annual average was 10 or below the past two years.

New Delhi, a heaving city of more than 20 million where Kandhari lives, usually tops the list of the many Indian cities gasping for breath as haze turns the capital's sky gray and obscures buildings and monuments. It's worse in autumn, when the burning of crop residues in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap deadly smoke over the city, sometimes for weeks.

Vehicle emissions and fireworks set off during the Hindu Diwali festival add to the murk, and the results include coughs, headaches, flight delays and highway pileups. The government sometimes asks residents to work from home or carpool, some schools go online and families that can afford them turn to air purifiers.

On Thursday, even as a hazardous haze disrupted life for millions across the U.S., New Delhi still ranked as the second-most polluted city in the world, according to daily data from most air quality monitoring organizations.

Kandhari, whose daughter had to give up outdoor sports over health scares related to the bad air, said the air pollution is constant but policymakers only seem to notice its most acute moments. That has to change, she said.

“We should not compromise when it comes to access to cleaner air,” Kandhari said.

Many African countries in the Sahara Desert regularly grapple with bad air due to sandstorms. On Thursday, AccuWeather gave nations ranging from Egypt to Senegal a rating of purple, for dangerous air quality. It was the same rating given this week to New York and Washington, D.C.

Senegal has suffered unsafe air for years. It's especially bad in Senegal's east as desertification — the encroachment of the Sahara onto drylands — carries particles into the region, said Dr. Aliou Ba, a senior Greenpeace Africa campaigner based in the capital of Dakar.

The Great Green Wall, a massive tree-planting effort aimed at slowing desertification, has been underway for years. But Ba said pollution has been growing worse as the number of cars on the road, burning low-quality fuel, increases.

In the U.S., the 1970 passage of the Clean Air Act cleared up many smog-filled cities by setting limits on most sources of air pollution. The landmark regulation led to curbs on soot, smog, mercury and other toxic chemicals.

But many developing and newly industrialized nations have weak or little-enforced environmental laws. They suffer increased air pollution for other reasons, too, including a reliance on coal, lower vehicle emissions standards and the burning of solid fuels for cooking and heating.

In Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country, it's often difficult to find clear blue sky, with power plants and vehicle emissions accounting for much of the pollution. It's also one of the world's largest coal-producing nations.

In one apartment building in the north of the city, between two busy ports where coal is shipped and stockpiled and where factories burn more, residents tried filtering coal dust with a net. It didn't work.

“My family and I often feel itching and coughing," Cecep Supriyadi, a 48-year-old resident, said. “So, when there is a lot of dust entering the flat, yes, we must be isolated at home. Because when we are outside the house, it feels like a sore throat, sore eyes, and itchy skin.”

An Indonesian court in 2021 ruled that leaders had neglected citizens' rights to clean air and ordered them to improve it.

China has improved since Beijing was notorious for eye-watering pollution that wreathed office towers in haze, diverted flights and sent the old and young to hospitals to be put on respirators. When the air was at its worst, schools that could afford it installed inflatable covers over sports fields with airlock-style revolving doors and home air filters became as ubiquitous as rice cookers.

Key to the improvement was closing or moving heavy industries out of Beijing and nearby areas. Older vehicles were taken off the road, many replaced with electric vehicles. China still is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, but almost none is consumed at street level. The average PM 2.5 reading in Beijing in 2013 of 89.5 — well above the WHO’s standard of 10 — fell to 58 in 2017 and now sits at around 30. China had just one city — Hotan — in the world's top 10 for worst air.

Mexico City, ringed by mountains that trap bad air, was one of the most polluted cities in the world until the 1990s, when the government began limiting the number of cars on the streets. Pollution levels dropped, but the city's 9 million people — 22 million including suburbs — rarely see a day when air pollution levels are considered “acceptable.”

Each year, air pollution is responsible for nearly 9,000 deaths in Mexico City, according to the National Institute of Public Health. It's usually worse in the dry winter and early spring months, when farmers burn their fields to prepare for planting.

Authorities haven’t released a full-year air quality report since 2020, but that year — not considered particularly bad for pollution, because the pandemic reduced traffic— Mexico City saw unacceptable air quality on 262 days, or 72% of the year.

In the summer months, intense rains clean the city's air somewhat. That's what brought Verónica Tobar and her two children out Thursday to a small playground in the Acueducto neighborhood near one of the city's most congested avenues.

“We don’t come when we see that the pollution is very strong," Tobar said. Those days “you feel it in your eyes, you cry, they’re itchy," she said.

Her son was diagnosed with asthma last year and changes in temperature make it worse.

“But we have to get out, we can’t be locked up,” Tobar said as her children jumped off a slide.

___

Naishadham reported from Washington. Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing and journalists Babar Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan; Mark Stevenson and Teresa de Miguel in Mexico City; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; Sam Mednick in Dakar, Senegal; Edna Tarigan and Victoria Milko in Jakarta, Indonesia; and data journalist Camille Fassett in Seattle contributed to this report.

(CNN) — A wildfire in Northern Michigan burned through 3,600 acres, forcing evacuations and prompting the closure of a nearby highway Saturday, officials said.The blaze, centered in Grayling Township about 50 miles from Traverse City, is spreading west and southwest and threatening multiple buildings, the state's Department of Natural Resources said in a statement."Evacuations are being conducted by emergency personnel," the department said. A five-mile stretch of Interstate 75 was shut down in both directions as crews battle the fire, and a temporary flight restriction was issued for a five-mile perimeter around the fire below 5,000 feet.Firefighters are attacking the flames from the ground and the air, with aircraft scooping water from Neff Lake, Shellenbarger Lake and Lake Margrethe, according to the statement. Crawford County Sheriff Ryan Swope said in a statement that power in the area has been shut off for the safety of firefighters working under power lines. It's still unknown what sparked the fire, the Department of Natural Resources said in its statement earlier. The fire is burning as Michigan sees "unprecedented" hot and dry conditions for this time of year, setting the stage for extreme fire danger, the statement added. The wildfire produced thick smoke in the area Saturday, and the department warned nearby residents to limit exposure to wildfire smoke by staying indoors with windows shut. The Department of Natural Resources also said visibility may be reduced on roadways.Warm temperatures, low humidity, gusty winds and dry fuels will all combine to fuel the risk of fires in the days ahead, the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids said in a tweet.

At least two people are missing after a horrific wildfire tore through Boulder, County, Colorado, Thursday, leveling whole subdivisions and charring more than 6,000 acres.

"We have two missing people still," Boulder Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Jennifer Churchill said Saturday. The office "will continue to investigate," Churchill said. No additional information was provided about the missing persons.

The news came a day after officials said there had been no deaths as a result of blaze, which was miraculous given the Marshall Fire's speed and ferocity, they said. At the time, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said one person who had been missing Thursday night had been accounted for.

Officials flew over the affected area Friday morning to assess the damage shortly before the weather swung to the other extreme, with a cold front that dumped several inches of snow.

Subdivisions on the west side of Superior and in Old Town Superior were "totally gone," Pelle said in the news conference later that day, adding the south side of Louisville suffered "catastrophic losses" as well.

"I would estimate it's going to be at least 500 homes (destroyed)," Pelle said. "I would not be surprised if it's 1,000."

Judy Delaware's family lost their Louisville home in the blaze, escaping the fast-moving fires with not much more than their dogs and the clothes on their backs, she told CNN Saturday, as she stood with her family in the snow that's blanketed the region over the last couple days. Now the home is a "pile of rubble," she said.

"It just felt like a punch to the stomach," she said of the moment she realized her home was gone. "And this can't be real, it's just so surreal to be able to even fathom, everything you own is just gone. Gone."

Authorities announced evacuation orders Thursday as the fire quickly made its way to suburban neighborhoods. Many of those areas remain blocked off because it's "still too dangerous" for residents to return just yet, the sheriff said Friday.

"We saw still active fire in many places this morning, we saw downed power lines, we saw a lot of risk that we're still trying to mitigate," he said. "As soon as residents are able to get back, we're going to let them back. That's our goal."

The Marshall Fire was one of two blazes that started Thursday morning. Fueled by historic winds, its flames sped across drought-parched land, traveling "down a football field in a matter of seconds," Gov. Jared Polis described in a Thursday news conference.

The other fire, known as the Middle Fork Fire, was attacked quickly and "laid down," the sheriff said.

Containment of the Marshall Fire remained at 0% Friday because fighting this blaze is different, the fire's incident commander, Michael Smith, told reporters.

"This is about working around the perimeters of homes and working our way through the process," he said. "We're having to kind of change our thought process on what containment looks like," he said.

But fire officials did not expect much more fire growth as the winds died down and more snow fell. The area has seen between 5 and 8 inches of snow in the last 24 hours, CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford said Saturday afternoon: Louisville has seen 8 inches, and Boulder had seen 8.2 inches, he said.

'A hurricane of smoke and fire'

Many of the residents in the fire's path were caught off-guard by the evacuation orders, and the rush to leave was a chaotic one, as they scrambled to grab belongings and pets before fleeing.

"They were given immediate orders to evacuate," Denver Fire Department spokesperson Capt. Greg Pixley told CNN on Friday. "People aren't prepared for that."

The Delaware family was together the day of the blaze, chatting with a friend on FaceTime when their son alerted them to the fire nearby. When they went out to take a look, they could tell things were moving swiftly.

Prescott Delaware, Judy's son, estimated the flames were about 600 yards away. "But with, like, 100 mile per hour winds," he added.

His partner, Tayler Sustello, described seeing a red and orange sky and blackening smoke, and the wind was strong enough to knock her over, she said.

"Things were moving quickly," she said. "And the sound of the wind -- it honestly just sounded like a hurricane of smoke and fire."

The family took just a few minutes to grab a handful of essentials: phone chargers, their dogs' leashes and medicine. Judy Delaware grabbed some slippers and pajamas, but she had to leave behind other belongings, like photographs of her parents.

It was overwhelming to drive away and think about all the people she knew who were affected by the fire, her daughter, Elise Delaware, said.

"Just seeing the home that you love and you are so proud of just going up in smoke is just horrible. It's horrible," she said. But she's just grateful her loved ones are safe.

Resident Hunt Frye said he was shopping for soup for his wife at a Costco in Superior when a worker suddenly told customers to evacuate, sending them running. As he drove home, Frye watched a frenzied evacuation around him, describing it as "apocalyptic-feeling."

"People were running from their houses with their pet cats and, you know, everybody was very panic-stricken," he said. "The thing that really struck me was the fear in the police officers' face(s) who were trying to kind of get traffic going. They were legitimately scared."

Several people were being treated for injuries as of Friday, authorities said.

"In this kind of situation you'd expect, honestly, dozens of fatalities," Polis told CNN Friday evening. "These are thousands of people, many had five minutes to flee. It would be remarkable if there aren't any (deaths)."

Cause of blaze is under investigation

The origin of the blaze is still under investigation, the sheriff said there were power lines down where the Marshall Fire started.

"The origin of the fire hasn't been confirmed. It's suspected to be power lines but we are investigating that today and we have folks on the ground as we speak trying to pinpoint that cause," Pelle said.

But the Boulder Office of Emergency Management (OEM) said power company Xcel Energy "found no downed power lines."

"Xcel Energy has been a very responsive and invaluable partner. At this point, they have inspected all of their lines within the ignition area and found no downed power lines," Boulder OEM said in a news release.

"They did find some compromised communication lines that may have been misidentified as power lines. Typically, communications lines (telephone, cable, internet, etc.) would not be the cause of a fire," the release added.

A full investigation is ongoing, it said.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Wildfires across the West are sending toxic plumes of smoke into the air, affecting cities thousands of miles away.

And as fires grow more frequent and destructive, doctors are raising awareness about the possible risks for pregnant women and their unborn babies.

"Clinicians now are realizing that climate change is impacting our patients today because the events are happening so frequently," said Dr. Marya Zlatnik, OBGYN and maternal-fetal medicine expert at the University of California San Francisco.

Dr. Zlatnik says historically, medical education for pregnant women has focused more on individual choices impacting health, like smoking.

“There’s sort of this whole, broad category of risks we haven’t studied yet. But they’re things we have lots of reason to suspect shouldn’t be ingested by pregnant women or kids," said Dr. Zlatnik.

One year ago, the Bay Area woke to an apocalyptic, smoke-choked sky as fires burned throughout Northern California. Today, fires are consuming the state at the same pace.

The toxic particles in wildfire smoke are small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream. And Dr. Zlatnik says researchers are now finding soot from wildfires in placentas.

“Anything that damages the placenta or causes inflammation in the placenta can potentially sort of directly harm the baby or lead to problems with pregnancy, like preterm birth, or the baby not growing as well.”

A study published last month found there may have been as many as 7,000 additional premature births in California attributable to wildfire smoke exposure between 2007 and 2012.

“That can have a lifelong impact for that baby. Prematurity is probably the number one cause of neural developmental problems and is certainly very expensive and very scary for parents," said Dr. Zlatnik. "Anything we can do to avoid unnecessary inflammation is something that could potentially really have long-term beneficial health impacts.”

Authors of the new study note that premature births cost the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $25 billion per year, and that even modest reductions in preterm birth risk could greatly benefit society.

Expecting her first child in October, Laura Canton says she's hyper-aware of the changing climate as she thinks about her daughter's future.

“When we walk on the beach, we see bottle caps, plastic bottles, Legos, just everywhere on the beach. It’s sad to know Ocean is going to grow up and may not get to go to Yosemite or the forest because it's going to be gone," said Canton.

Living in San Diego, she's experienced the hazy fog of wildfires.

“The clouds come in, and you can see it’s a different haze. The sunsets are really orange," said Canton. "It’s very dry here. So, if one house lights up, our houses are so close together, it could take down the whole city, it is scary.”

Dr. Zlatnik says there are steps pregnant women can take to protect themselves and their unborn children.

She recommends patients monitor air quality, checking the news, or using phone apps like AirVisual and Plume Air Report.

"The best way to improve air is to use either a home fan, air conditioning system that has a high-quality MERVE 13 filter that's going to filter out the PM2.5 material or a portable air cleaner, air purifier, that’s filtering out that particulate matter.”

A more affordable option, making one at home with a box fan and a furnace filter.

“I didn’t use to advise this for the women I care for in pregnancy, that they needed to invest in one of these things," said Dr. Zlatnik. "But that’s one of the ways that people who are pregnant can protect themselves.”

When firefighters are called upon to face dangerous wildfires, they sacrifice everything for the good of others. It is with that in mind that Woody Faircloth moved to start his own nonprofit, EmergencyRV.org.

"A lot of people have RVs, but they just have them in storage and don’t use them as much as they use to, so if you donate them to our nonprofit, we can give you the full appraised value as a tax deduction," said Faircloth.

Over the years, he’s donated 90 RVs and trailers to firefighters.

"Some of these firefighters we helped just last year, they drove by their homes as they were being engulfed in flames because they were evacuating the town," said Faircloth.

Come Friday, and he’ll be on the road to the Dixie Fire in California to deliver an RV and a trailer.

"We got called two days ago from the California Fire Foundation, and they told us that, 'Hey, we’ve got 10 firefighters who lost their homes, and we really could use your help,'" said Faircloth.

Some of the firefighters still don’t know they lost their homes. Making it even more meaningful when Faircloth provides a place for them to take shelter.

"Some of those firefighters have young families, and they don’t have anywhere to go. They’ve lost everything they own, and we want to give them a place to call home until they can get up on their feet again," said Faircloth.

It’s a need Faircloth only sees increasing as wildfires continue to destroy so much and leave by behind little to nothing.

"We still have a home to come home to. We’re still blessed with everything we have, and there is no adversity," said Faircloth.

A small act of kindness that could mean a world of a difference to a firefighter in need.

Ivan Rodriguez at KMGH first reported this story.

GREENVILLE, Calif. —

Video above: Powerful winds challenge crews fighting Hawaii blaze

Thousands of firefighters have prepared for a tougher fight against California's largest wildfire as extremely dangerous weather returns, threatening to stoke flames into explosive growth.

Firefighters were able to save homes and hold large stretches of the blaze but a red flag warning was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon through Thursday because of hot, bone-dry conditions with winds up to 40 mph. That could drive flames through timber, brush and grass, especially along the northern and northeastern sides of the vast blaze.

"I think we definitely have a few hard days ahead of us," said Shannon Prather with the U.S. Forest Service.

The Dixie Fire jumped perimeter lines in a few spots Tuesday, prompting additional evacuation orders for some 15,000 people, fire officials said.

Firefighters prevented flames on Monday from reaching homes in the small Northern California community of Greenville near the Plumas National Forest as the 3-week-old fire grew to over 395 square miles across Plumas and Butte counties.

On Tuesday, spot fires jumped some of the perimeters and burned several acres of brush on the western side of the blaze, even though crews had cut back areas of unburned fuel with bulldozers and dumped some 230,000 gallons of fire retardant, said Mike Wink, a state fire operations section chief.

Heat from the flames also created a pyrocumulus cloud, a massive column of smoke that rose 30,000 feet in the air, he said.

The fire has threatened thousands of homes and destroyed 67 houses and other buildings since breaking out July 14. It was 35% contained.

About 150 miles west of California's Dixie Fire, the lightning-sparked McFarland Fire threatened remote homes along the Trinity River in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The fire was only 5% contained. It was burning fiercely through drought-stricken vegetation and had doubled in size every day, fire officials warned.

Similar risky weather was expected across Southern California, where heat advisories and warnings were issued for interior valleys, mountains and deserts for much of the week.

Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

More than 20,000 firefighters and support personnel were battling 97 large, active wildfires covering 2,919 square miles in 13 U.S. states, the National Interagency Fire Center said.

Montana had 25 active large blazes, followed by Idaho with 21 and Oregon with 13. California had 11.

In Hawaii, firefighters gained control over the 62-square-mile Nation Fire that forced thousands of people to evacuate over the weekend and destroyed at least two homes on the Big Island.

In southern Oregon, lightning struck parched forests hundreds of times in a 24-hour period, igniting 50 new wildfires. But firefighters and aircraft attacked the flames before they spread out of control and no homes were immediately threatened.

Meanwhile, Oregon's Bootleg Fire, the nation's largest at 647 square miles, was 84% contained and firefighters were busy mopping up hot spots and strengthening fire lines.

"Crews are working tirelessly to ensure we are as prepared as we can be for the extreme fire weather forecast for the next couple days," a U.S. Forest Service update said.

A black bear cub that was injured in a California wildfire is recovering after being rescued.

A Markleeville resident on Sunday found the bear, which had been hurt in the Tamarack Fire, and contacted Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, according to fire officials. Rescuers were not able to locate the bear's mother.

The injured cub was taken to the wildlife rescue center in South Lake Tahoe, where it will stay until it's fully recovered.

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Fire officials on Monday said there has been "significant signs of progress" in battling the large Tamarack Fire that ignited south of Lake Tahoe earlier this month and spread into Nevada.

The wildfire began July 4 and was one of nearly two dozen blazes sparked by lightning strikes. It exploded in size after a windy Friday later in the month.

WICKIEUP, Ariz. — Officials confirmed Sunday that a retired Northwest Fire Department fire chief and a pilot were killed after an aircraft crashed while battling the Cedar Basin Fire in Mohave County, Arizona.

The Bureau of Land Management confirmed that retired fire chief Jeff Piechura, 62, and Pilot Matthew Miller, 48, were the two onboard the plane when the crash happened.

In a statement, the Bureau of Land Management says the crash occurred around 12 p.m. while crews were performing an air attack over the fire 14 miles east of Wikieup.

Miller was a fire pilot contracted by the U.S. Forest Service, and Piechura was working as an Air Tactical Group Supervisor with the Coronado National Forest.

“Our hearts and most sincere condolences are with the families, friends and colleagues of both individuals lost in this tragic accident," said BLM Arizona State Director Raymond Suazo. "This reminds us of the inherent risks involved in wildland firefighting and the gratitude we owe to the courageous and committed men and women who serve willingly to protect lives, communities and natural resources.”

The Department of Interior Office of Aviation Services, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the Federal Aviation Administration will be handling the investigation.

This story was originally published by Cydeni Carter at KNXV.

From wildfires to hurricanes, natural disasters can destroy entire towns.

“We’re just putting structures in harm's way, and harm's way is becoming a broader and broader area,” the Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences at CU Boulder, Waleed Abdalati, said.

Beachfront properties, cabins in the mountains, houses below sea level all exist in potentially risky areas.

“Who doesn't want to look at the ocean? So there's a lot of development right up to the edge of the water, and over time that edge of the water is creeping inward,” Abdalati said.

Sometimes where we build doesn't necessarily mean forever. In fact, more often than not, our homes and offices are in the path of potentially devastating natural disasters.

“57 percent of structures are in only 31 percent of the area which is these hazard hot spots,” Matthew Rossi, a research scientist at Earthlab at CU Boulder, said. He also was one of the authors of a new study looking at the risks of where we’ve developed over the years.

The study details the areas they investigated and the risks that exist in those spots.

“We were looking at using structure level data, so the building that is constructed in hazard hotspots, and asking 'Are we preferentially building in those places?'” Rossi explained.

The answer is yes. The study found growth rates in hotspots exceed the national trend.

“We actually are preferentially building in these hazardous zones,” he said.

They looked at earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, floods, and hurricane wind speeds. These are all events that Jeff Schlegelmilch with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness is familiar with.

“We have a lot of structures, a lot of aspects of modern society that are in harm's way,” Schlegelmilch said.

He said he sees an increase in the frequency of these disastrous events as well.

“Looking backward doesn't tell us everything we need to know moving forward. The kind of hazards we’re exposed to, the aging infrastructure we have, it's all entering into a changing world with more extreme events,” Schlegelmilch said. “If 2020 weren’t known for COVID, it would be known as another record-breaking year of billion-dollar weather-related disasters.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keep data on the impact these events have.

From 1980 to 2021, floods cost an average of $3.6 billion a year, wildfires $2.5 billion. The average cost for all disasters every year is around $45.4 billion.

“You have the convergence of development, increased vulnerability from sinking land, and increased vulnerability from climate change,” Abdalati said. He’s been watching the earth change from space his entire career.

“We’re living in a changing world, we’re living in a changing environment, and that changing environment brings with it risk. And it’s critical for our success as a society that we understand those risks, and we do what we can to mitigate those risks,” he said.

For example, wildfires.

“We see increases in the number of fires over the last few decades, and we see increases in the areas burned by those fires,” he explained.

As we continue to develop land and experience a changing pattern of weather events, Schlegelmilch said it’s important that people stay informed of where they’re at and the risks they face.

“We have to prepare for a world where this is more normal, not more of an outlier, and prepare for those scenarios,” Schlegelmilch said.

“I think it actually helps local and regional planners to think about how they might reframe some of the questions they've always been asking when developing in hazardous zones,” Rossi said.

Almost 100 people in Oregon have now died as a result of a recent heatwave that brought historic temperatures to the Pacific Northwest last week.

Oregon's governor, Kate Brown, said communities of color and low-income families were disproportionately impacted.

She is calling for more federal resources to combat the issue. 

Brown said the heatwave showed a need to prepare even more for climate change.

Heat-related deaths have also been reported in Washington state and Canada.

At the same time, emergency responders in British Columbia are battling more than 180 wildfires, most of which were likely caused by lightning strikes.

This story originally reported by Robin Dich and Alex Livingston on Newsy.com.