The Northern California inferno that ignited last week is now the fifth-largest wildfire in state history, Cal Fire said Tuesday.
The Park fire has burned 383,619 acres in Butte and Tehama counties — more than 12 times the area of San Francisco — and was 14% contained as of Tuesday morning. Thousands of people have been ordered to leave their homes, and 192 structures have been destroyed, according to Cal Fire’s latest status report.
Lassen Volcanic National Park has been closed since Saturday due to the flames.
More than 5,000 firefighters have been dispatched to fight the fire.
There was some positive news for residents of Butte County, where officials reduced mandatory evacuation orders in several areas to warnings. But with temperatures forecast to rise above 100 degrees through the end of the week, firefighters may face worsening conditions as they try to put out the flames.
According to local prosecutors, the fire was started Wednesday by a man who pushed a burning car down an embankment near a swimming hole in a Chico park. The man, 42-year-old Ronnie Dean Stout II, has been arrested and charged with arson in connection to the blaze.
“The male was then seen calmly leaving the area by blending in with the other citizens who were in the area and fleeing the rapidly evolving fire,” the Butte County district attorney’s office said when announcing the arrest. “The car went down an embankment approximately 60 feet and burned completely, spreading flames that caused the Park fire.”
During a court appearance Monday, Stout denied pushing the car down the embankment, the Sacramento Bee reported, and said it rolled down the hill by accident. He did not enter a plea.
In a TikTok post that’s been viewed more than 1.2 million times, a woman claims to have seen the man who started the fire.
“I watched the guy blow up his car and then put it in neutral and roll it down the hill and take off like nothing happened,” a user named Elizabeth Fox says in the video. “That fire spread so fast, and I barely got out of there.”
In the video, Fox says she took the man’s picture and gave a statement to police.
“How can people be so cruel?” she asks.
Stout was convicted in 2001 of lewd and lascivious acts with a child younger than 14. In a separate case the following year, he was convicted of robbery with great bodily injury.
