Park fire sparked by man pushing burning car in gully, officials say

The Park fire in Butte County consumes a building off Cohasset Road in Chico.

Published July 24, 2024 Updated July 26, 2024 8:44 AM PT

A man has been arrested on suspicion of arson after officials say he pushed a burning car down a gully in Chico, sparking what quickly became California’s largest wildfire of the year.

Ronnie Dean Stout II, 42, of Chico was seen around 3 p.m. Wednesday pushing the car about 60 feet down an embankment in the city’s Bidwell Park, where it became engulfed in flames that quickly burned out of control, according to a Butte County district attorney’s office news release.

A burnt car at the bottom of a fire-scorched gully

He 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 district attorney’s office said.

The fire exploded across the landscape over the next few hours, driven by winds, heat and dry brush, forcing thousands to evacuate in the dark of night. By Friday morning, it had burned more than 164,000 acres, having raced north parallel to Highway 99 and into Tehama County, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. No other California wildfire has surpassed 40,000 acres this year.

By 9 p.m. Wednesday, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office had ordered evacuations for residents northeast of Chico, with additional neighborhoods being added to the list throughout the night. More than 4,000 people had been evacuated by Thursday evening, according to Megan McMann, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office. Several rural areas in Tehama County were also under evacuation orders. No injuries had been reported as of Thursday evening.

An evacuation warning was issued Thursday afternoon for the town of Paradise, which was devastated by wildfire in 2018, according to a Cal Fire Facebook post.

Stout was booked on suspicion of arson for the fire and is being held without bail in Butte County Jail until a court hearing Monday, the district attorney’s office said.

Following the fire’s growth overnight, crews battled flames while negotiating persistent winds and temperatures that reached over 100 degrees.

The National Weather Service also issued a red flag warning for the northern Sacramento Valley, which includes the region where the fire is spreading. Forecasters warned there could be wind gusts up to 30 mph pushing the blaze north combined with low humidity through Friday evening, which “can cause new fire starts and ongoing wildfires to ... grow rapidly and dangerously in size and intensity.”

Firefighters remained focused on protecting structures and the public until additional crews arrived. No buildings had been confirmed damaged as of Thursday, but a thorough assessment had not yet been completed, said Dan Collins, a Cal Fire spokesperson for the Butte Unit. Several videos from the fire showed some buildings ablaze.

The other major component driving this fire, he said, is its location, burning north into the Ishi Wilderness and Lassen foothills, which experts say hasn’t seen fire activity in decades, if not a century.

“Once it got into that area, it had a lot of fuel to consume,” Collins said.

“A lot of us who work in fire have kind of been waiting for this fire to happen for the last 25 years,” said Zeke Lunder, a Chico-based fire specialist and geographer. He said the lack of recent blazes has made the area a jackpot for flames.

The fire initially began chewing through new grasses that sprang up in the wake of two back-to-back wet winters, Lunder said, but it really accelerated once it reached heavier vegetation, such as live oak and grapevines that spit out red-hot embers that can be carried in the wind and start new fires or expand the blaze’s boundary.

The area also includes a lot of steep, inaccessible terrain, which has hindered firefighters’ response.

“Some of the challenges were just getting resources into the edge of the fire,” Collins said. There’s been some progress where it’s burning closer to developed areas, but it’s still far from under control, he said.

“The southwesterly portion of the fire, the crews were able to get in there last night … and establish some control lines,” Collins said. But he said more containment is needed to protect nearby communities, and further evacuation orders could be issued.

Smoke from the Park fire in Butte County shrouds trees

Cal Fire listed the fire at 164,286 acres Friday morning, with no containment. Residents in northeast Chico, Forest Ranch and some smaller mountain areas, including the hamlet of Cohasset, have been ordered to evacuate, according to the Sheriff’s Office. In eastern Tehama County, the Campbellville area is under a mandatory evacuation order, according to local reports. Several roads in the area have also been closed.

The fire’s massive expansion was particularly unusual to see overnight, Lunder said. The fire made a huge run after dusk on Wednesday — throwing up a massive column of smoke and flames — as it began to align with faults and ridges in the Lassen foothills, he said.

“Even though it was going across the canyons, there’s all these little side canyons, and so it was kind of a perfect setup,” Lunder said.

He said the blaze was likely to continue growing in the hours and days ahead, noting that it’s not unusual for fires of this size to double in acreage every day.

“It’s a big one,” Lunder said. “Unless you can get people out there on the ground to put in fire lines, aircraft alone aren’t necessarily going to put this fire out — and the area where it’s burning into is extremely rough.”

And though the fire is primarily burning in low-country grass and brush, there’s potential for it to reach the Cohasset Ridge and become “a lower-elevation version of the Dixie fire,” Lunder said, referring to the 2021 blaze that burned about 963,000 acres — the second-largest wildfire in California history.

The fire also has echoes of the Camp fire, Lunder said, which devastated the nearby town of Paradise, killing 85 people.

“If we had a city of 30,000 people in the [Lassen] foothills, it would have had a Paradise-type experience yesterday,” Lunder said. “This fire so far has threaded the needle through this area with pretty low-density development.”

But that could change in an instant, as many Californians know all too well. There is potential for the blaze to grow into the more developed area of Cohasset, which would be a “worst-case scenario” that could lead to major structure loss, Lunder said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state had secured a fire management assistance grant from the federal government, which provides significant financial support for communities affected by wildfires, resources that can be quickly put to use.

A crew of more than 1,100 was assigned to the growing fire, with several air tankers and more than 150 engines being deployed, Cal Fire officials said.

Times staff writers Joseph Serna and Corinne Purtill contributed to this report.