A growing wildfire in Oregon has destroyed multiple homes and prompted evacuation orders in the Columbia River Gorge area, in what officials are calling an early warning of the fire season ahead.
The so-called Rowena fire had grown on Thursday to 3,500 acres (1,400 hectares) and remained 0% contained, prompting officials to issue evacuation orders for hundreds of homes and to temporarily close a section of an interstate highway.
The state’s governor, Tina Kotek, invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act for the Rowena Fire, allowing the state’s fire marshal agency to mobilize resources, it said in a statement.
The agency said it was mobilizing an incident management team and six structural taskforces, with three responding on Wednesday night and the other three arriving early on Thursday. The fire has already destroyed about 20 homes, according to local news reports, and is threatening nearly 2,200 structures.
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