Update: A newer report on the Park Fire can be found here.
The Park Fire grew dramatically and with erratic behavior on Friday, another day of gusty winds and low humidity, fire officials said.
By noon Saturday the fire had burned 348,370 acres (544 square miles) in Butte and Tehama counties, and a preliminary survey indicated 134 structures had been damaged or destroyed, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Park is the biggest California wildfire since 2021’s Dixie, which burned 963,309 acres in five counties.
The map above shows the Park Fire’s approximate perimeter as a black line and the evacuation area in red.
Highways 36 and 32 were closed through the fire area. Highway 44, the north boundary of the evacuation area, remained open Saturday.
CalFire investigators say the fire started Wednesday afternoon when a man pushed a burning car down an embankment into a brush-filled gully in Chico’s Upper Bidwell Park. Within 12 hours it was the state’s biggest wildfire of the season.
New zones continued to come under evacuation orders Friday. Though several zones on the west side of the fire were downgraded to warnings, the addition of zones to the north and east pushed the evacuation area to 1,200 square miles.
At a news conference Thursday, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea expressed frustration that many residents were not complying with the instruction to leave. He referred to the death toll of the 2018 Camp Fire, and said, “I don’t know how to keep saying this over and over again. People have got to know their zones. … In addition to that, you have to be prepared to go.”
Honea said that, in the evacuation zone in the community of Cohasset on Wednesday night, he encountered “numerous people who were not prepared to go,” including three who said their cars were out of gas. On Thursday, the fire swept through Cohasset.
A red-flag warning, indicating heightened fire risk because of weather conditions, was in effect for the area until 11 p.m. Friday.
For details of the evacuation zone, including warning areas, see the Butte County evacuation map or the Genasys Protect map (Tehama County only).
