Wildfires

Pacific Gas & Electric is facing new criminal charges for its role in igniting the 2019 California Wildfires. Five felony and 28 misdemeanour charges have been filed by the Sonoma County district attorney Jill Ravitch, including recklessly causing a fire that seriously injured six firefighters.

PG&E has stated that they "do not believe there was any crime here" but that they "remain committed to making it right for all those impacted and working to further reduce wildfire risk on our system."

As the wildfires in Southern California spread rapidly, nearly 70,000 people have been ordered to evacuate. The Silverado Fire and Blue Ridge Fire, fueled by high winds and low humidity, have been increasing since Monday and have grown to nearly 30,000 acres combined in the past 48 hours.

On Sunday a fire has erupted on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The fire could be observed near the middle of the mountain and "efforts to extinguish it are still ongoing" according to the Tanzania National Parks service.

According to the newspaper "The Citizen", people from neighboring communities helped to combat the fire, but because the fire broke out at a higher altitude, the extinguishing work was difficult.

Three months before the end, 2020 is also the year with the largest number of fire outbreaks in the Pantanal: from January 1 to September 30, there were 18,259 outbreaks.

According to scientists from the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, smoke from the wildfires in the western United States has travelled 8,000 kilometres and reached Britain and other parts of northern Europe.

Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Service has stated that "the scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than in any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers, since 2003".

Over half a million people – or 10+% of the state's population – are fleeing Oregon to escape the wildfires that have been raging across the Pacific Northwest.

Governor Kate Brown (D) told reporters that this most likely wasn't a "one-time event" and that the current situation was a "bellwether for the future" of "acute impacts of climate change." Brown has reported that at least four people have died, including a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother.

Local media has reported that at a campground in a Sierra Nevada National Park that about 1000 people were cut off from the surrounding area. The only access road was impassable due to a forest fire. Firefighters and rescue planes tried to gain access to the area. The campers threatened by the flames were instructed to take refuge in the water of the Mammoth Pool Reservoir, reported "The Fresno Bee", citing a spokesman for the national park.