Fires rage in several states as heat wave broils US West

Firefighters working in searing weather struggled to contain a Northern California wildfire that continued to grow Sunday and forced the closure of a major highway, one of several large blazes burning across the U.S. West amid another heat wave that shattered records and strained power grids.

Two firefighters died Saturday in Arizona after a plane they were in crashed during a survey of a small wildfire in rural Mohave County. The aircraft was helping perform reconnaissance over the Cedar Basin Fire near Wikieup, a tiny community of about 100, when it went down around noon.

The two firefighters were the only people on board, officials said. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

In California, officials asked all residents to reduce power consumption quickly after a major wildfire in southern Oregon knocked out interstate power lines, preventing up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity from flowing into the state.

The California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s power grid, said Saturday the Bootleg Fire took three transmission lines off-line, straining electricity supplies as temperatures in the area soared.

“The Bootleg Fire will see the potential for extreme growth today,” the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon, tweeted Sunday.

Pushed by strong winds, the Bootleg Fire exploded in size to 224 square miles (580 square kilometers) as it raced through heavy timber in Oregon's Fremont-Winema National Forest near the Klamath County town of Sprague River.

To the southeast, the largest wildfire of the year in California was raging along the border with Nevada. The Beckwourth Complex Fire — a combination of two lightning-caused blazes burning 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Lake Tahoe — showed no sign of slowing its...