In an update on Wednesday evening, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) confirmed that four new wildfires had started in the state, with the Airola Fire in Calaveras County the worst, having already destroyed 700 acres by the end of the day.
The South Fire, which sparked in San Bernardino County on Wednesday, has so far destroyed 500 acres, while the Westward Fire in Riverside County and the Bennett Fire in Nevada County have burned 200 and 59 acres respectively.
The South and Airola fires are 0 percent contained, but the Westward blaze is 10 percent contained and the Bennett Fire has seen 60 percent containment, according to Cal Fire figures.
The four new blazes are burning in California alongside seven others, prompting there to be 37,252 people evacuated by Wednesday, according to the office of emergency services.
The majority of the evacuations have taken place in El Dorado County, at 24,500, due to the Caldor Fire that is continuing to grow close to Lake Tahoe after starting on August 14.
The Caldor Fire has so far destroyed 126,566 acres while being 12 percent contained, with the blaze continuing to move closer to the border between California and Nevada.
Data from Cal Fire shows that 637 buildings have been destroyed due to the fire and 37 have been damaged, with the agency assigning 80 crews totalling 2,897 personnel to help tackle the blaze. At least 243 fire engines, 51 dozers and 27 water tenders are at the site of the large wildfire.
The fire is one of 11 blazes currently burning in California that have so far destroyed 1,358,145 acres of land, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.
At least 92 large wildfires that have destroyed more than 2.5 million acres are currently burning in the U.S. across 13 states after a heatwave and drought in early July caused blazes to break out across the West Coast.
Officials have stressed that the devastating effects of the wildfires in the past few years have been exacerbated by the effects of climate change, which is likely to worsen in the future.
This message was echoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom earlier in August during a visit to the mountain town of Greenville, which saw several homes burned to the ground by the Dixie Fire, the largest blaze currently burning across the U.S. and the second largest in California’s history.
According to data shared by Cal Fire, the Dixie Fire has now destroyed 742,724 acres at 45 percent contained, just behind the August Complex blaze that burned more than 1 million acres in 2020.
On Tuesday, in reaction to the wildfires burning in California, President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for the state just a day after Newsom asked for him to do so.
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that it had ordered “[f]ederal aid to supplement State, tribal, and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by wildfires beginning on July 14, 2021, and continuing.”
