A tanker plane that disappeared in eastern Oregon while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several Western states has been found, and the pilot on board is dead, authorities said Friday. A local search and rescue team located the aircraft Friday morning, said a Bureau of Land Management information officer. The pilot was the only person on board. The single-engine tanker, a small and nimble plane that looks like a crop duster, was located in steep, forested terrain, the AP reports. The plane was battling the Falls Fire near the town of Seneca on the edge of the Malheur National Forest. The blaze has grown to 219 square miles and is 55% contained, the government website InciWeb shows.
Climate change is increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region endures recording-breaking heat and bone-dry conditions. Overall, more than 1,500 square miles burned this summer in the US Pacific Northwest, and more wildfires have spread in western Canada, filling the skies with smoke and haze. In California, more than 130 structures have been destroyed and thousands more are threatened by the state's largest active wildfire. The Park Fire started Wednesday, officials said, when a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico. By Friday morning, per the AP, the fire was completely uncontained after burning more than 257 square miles across the Sierra Nevada foothills above the city of 100,000.
About 4,000 residents in unincorporated areas of Butte County and 400 residents of Chico were ordered to evacuate, the sheriff said. "The fire quickly began to outpace our resources because of the dry fuels, the hot weather, the low humidities and the wind," Butte County Fire Chief Garrett Sjolund said. The Park Fire was burning to the northwest of Paradise, the community where in 2018 the notorious Camp Fire killed 85 people and incinerated thousands of homes, becoming California's deadliest and most destructive wildfire. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said he wanted "to express regret and frustration by the fact that we are here once again."
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