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ROB SCHUMACHER\/POOL\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n
As of Sunday afternoon, there were only about 20 buildings still standing in the city of Detroit, Oregon.<\/p>\n
The wildfires raging along the West Coast hit the small, rural enclave three hours outside of Portland over the weekend, burning a majority of the community\u2019s structures\u2014including City Hall, where the fire department\u2019s office is based. Locals have suggested the destruction was as if\u00a0\u201ca bomb went off.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe have approximately 20-25 structures still standing, and the rest are gone,\u201d the Idanha-Detroit Rural Fire Protection District\u00a0said on their Facebook page<\/a>, noting that several firefighters currently on the frontlines of these massive blazes had lost their own homes. \u201cI know this must be frustrating for everyone. Fires are still actively burning in Detroit and have kept firefighters busy. Our primary focus is protecting the structures that are still standing.\u201d<\/p>\n Elizabeth Smith, who left her house last week after evacuation orders in Detroit went from caution to \u201cgo now\u201d in a matter of hours, told\u00a0KATU-TV<\/a>\u00a0she lost everything from the blaze.<\/p>\n \u201cOur homes are absolutely destroyed. I\u2019ve seen a few videos and photos and my lovely little house that we remodeled 12 years ago in this beautiful canyon area is absolutely flattened,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n Smith and her neighbors from the small Oregon city are just some of the hundreds of thousands of residents across the West Coast who have lost their homes in recent days to these disastrous wildfires, which have scorched communities in fallen ash and smoke. So far, 35 people have died from the fires\u2014including at least 24 in California, 10 in Oregon, and one child in Washington. Many residents near the 39 large fires in California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado remain under evacuation orders, according to the\u00a0National Interagency Fire Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n And as upwards of 30,000 emergency personnel continue to fight blazes that have claimed more than 4.6 million acres in 10 states in recent weeks, experts on Monday warned that unpredictable wind gusts and drier weather may only make this disaster worse.<\/p>\n \u201cThis week, the weather has shifted so winds we have been seeing moving east to west are now going to change to come from the west\u2014meaning it will completely shift the emergency response,\u201d\u00a0Meg Krawchuk, an associate professor at the Oregon State University College of Forestry, told The Daily Beast on Monday. \u201cWhile the winds could be positive, because it may be precipitation, they are also completely changing the course of these fires. Essentially, it means we will have two-headed fires.\u201d<\/p>\n The massive blazes came after a slew of \u201ccomplex\u201d fires in California, stemming from an unprecedented lightning event in the state that forced thousands to evacuate and scorched hundreds of thousands of acres. Some of the worst fire conditions on Monday continued in Oregon, where more than 30 active fires had burned 900,000 acres across the state.\u00a0Officials said<\/a>\u00a0the Beachie Creek fire, a blaze near Portland that had destroyed almost 200,000 acres and killed four people, was showing no signs of slowing down.<\/p>\n \u201cWarmer and drier conditions from the temperature and winds create drier fuel, which has a short ignition time and catches faster. The winds dry in an increasing way, giving oxygen to the flame and carrying it farther to spread more rapidly,\u201d Krawchuk told The Daily Beast. \u201cThis is definitely a wake-up call for a lot of people who don\u2019t usually think about fire.\u201d<\/p>\n The fires along the West Coast have forced state officials to scramble to contain the domino effect, expending emergency services already strained by the coronavirus pandemic and requesting help from neighboring states and the federal government.<\/p>\n And relief may be several days away, according to experts who feared that while the winds would disperse some of the smoke smothering the Bay Area and other parts of the Pacific Northwest, the dry brush might only further fan the flames. The winds, caused by a slow-moving storm system off Oregon\u2019s coast, were expected to last throughout the week\u2014pushing smoke toward the Midwest and Canada.<\/p>\n After a series of rallies in Nevada over the weekend, President Donald Trump traveled to California on Monday for a briefing on the ongoing wildfires\u2014a natural disaster many Democratic lawmakers say represents the latest evidence of catastrophic climate change.<\/p>\n Trump, who has been openly skeptical of climate science, again argued Monday that forest mismanagement is the primary culprit for the catastrophic fires that have raged on the West Coast, a claim he\u2019s repeatedly made over the last few years.<\/p>\n