The largest wildfire currently burning in the United States is raging in California’s densely forested northwest corner. The Smith River Complex — actually a cluster of connected blazes — covered a total of 79,000 acres and was only 7 percent contained as of Wednesday evening. The fire began on Aug. 15 with a storm that scattered lightning strikes across the Six Rivers National Forest in Del Norte County, just south of the Oregon border. Since then, the fire has crossed into Oregon, closed roads, forced power outages that lasted days, and delayed the start of the school year for roughly 4,000 students in Del Norte County’s public schools. On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for the county, where the air quality has been abysmal for days and hundreds of people are still under evacuation orders.

Related articles: 

• Fresno Bee: California must improve forest management for public safety
• CA Natural Resources Agency: California launches online tool to track wildfire resilience projects
• International Association of Wildland Fire: Drivers of California’s changing wildfires: State has potential to be a model for change