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Wildfire smoke has affected air quality in California’s capital.

Smoke from the Caldor fire near Pollock Pines, Calif., on Wednesday.Credit...Fred Greaves/Reuters

The wildfires burning in Northern California, including the rapidly expanding Caldor fire east of Sacramento, are affecting more people than simply those forced to evacuate.

On Thursday, air pollution was projected to remain at unhealthy levels — above 150 on the air quality index — in Sacramento and other cities near the blaze.

Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis, said that air quality in the area had been getting worse every day.

“I can look right at the sun,” he said, “and it doesn’t bother me at all.”

The Caldor, which started last weekend, has already consumed more than 62,000 acres, injuring two people, destroying buildings in the small community of Grizzly Flats and forcing an emergency closure of the Eldorado National Forest. It remained uncontained as of Wednesday evening.

The Dixie fire, the second-largest blaze in the state’s recorded history, has been spreading for more than a month farther north, burning more than 662,000 acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen and Tehana Counties. It is 35 percent contained.

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transcript

Caldor Fire Continues to Burn Northern California

The Caldor Fire is threatening thousands of homes in Northern California as its destructive path spreads. Thousands of people remain under evacuation orders.

Worst thing is this house wasn’t even fought from the fire.

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The Caldor Fire is threatening thousands of homes in Northern California as its destructive path spreads. Thousands of people remain under evacuation orders.CreditCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Cal Fire said on Wednesday that fire activity increased on the western side of the Dixie fire because of clearing smoke and a change in wind direction. On the eastern side, said Geoff Belyea, an incident commander, there was “fire behavior that many of our seasoned and veteran firefighters had yet to see in their careers.”

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it: It was a bare-knuckle fight,” he added.

Two other active blazes in the state, the McFarland fire in Shasta County and the Monument fire in Trinity County, have each burned more than 100,000 acres.

Noting the size of the fires, Mr. Wexler said, “The firefighters can only do so much.”

“My prediction is some of these fires are just going to be here until it rains,” he added, “which will be hopefully October, and not later than that.”

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The Greenwood fire is growing rapidly in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota.Credit...Nick Petrack/U.S. Forest Service, via Associated Press

While wildfires occur throughout the West every year, scientists see the influence of climate change in the extreme heat waves that have contributed to the intensity of fires this summer. Prolonged periods of abnormally high temperatures are a signal of a shifting climate, they say.

In addition to wildfires along the West Coast, firefighters are battling several smaller blazes in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota. The largest of those fires, the Greenwood fire, is about 4,000 acres and “moving very quickly due to strong gusts of wind and dry vegetation,” officials said this week. It has forced some evacuations after being started by lightning on Sunday.

Mike Ives contributed reporting.

Azi Paybarah is a reporter on the Politics desk, based in New York. He joined The Times in 2018 and was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. More about Azi Paybarah

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