PORTLAND, OREGON - Search and rescue crews using dogs combed through neighbourhoods left in blackened ruins by massive wildfires burning across three states on Saturday , and US President Donald Trump said he would travel to California to see the devastation first-hand.
At least six people have been killed this week in Oregon, according to the state's wildfire tracking website. Governor Kate Brown has said that dozens of people remained missing across three counties. It was his first acknowledgment in almost a month of a wildfire season that so far has claimed 17 lives and destroyed millions of acres of land in California, Oregon and Washington.
THICK SMOKE BLANKETS THREE STATES "The debate is over around climate change. Just come to the state of California. Observe it with your own eyes," Mr Newsom said in a briefing livestreamed from a charred mountainside near Oroville, California. More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks.
Molalla was on the front line of an evacuation zone stretching north to within 4.8km of downtown Portland.