The largest wildfire currently burning in California grew to more than 350,000 acres on Saturday, but there is hope that progress in containing and cooling the fire will help it overcome the blaze.

The Park Fire was started Wednesday by a man who pushed a burning vehicle into a ditch filled with dried brush in a Chico park, authorities say. The blaze quickly doubled in size, then doubled again in the heat, dried brush and gusting winds.

Similar conditions ravaged the West this month, with forest areas in states like Oregon and Washington, as well as parts of Canada, going up in smoke.

Cal Fire officials said the Park Fire had destroyed 134 structures so far as it moved north from Chico and spread from Butte into Tehama County. After three days of no containment, firefighters had the blaze 10% contained on Saturday.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said mandatory and recommended evacuations were in effect depending on the location.

A portion of the Lassen National Forest near the Park Fire was closed Friday as a precaution, according to a memo from Forest Service Ranger Deb Bumpus.

Also on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Butte and Tehama counties, as well as Plumas County, home to the much smaller Gold Complex Fire, which now spans 3,007 acres with 50% containment, according to Cal Fire.

His office said the proclamations would make it easier for fire victims to replace lost identification and file for unemployment benefits. On Saturday, Newsom’s office said it had also received a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help firefighters battle the Borel Fire in Kern County.

The fire east of Bakersfield started July 24 on federal land and has burned 31,000 acres, the governor’s office said.

The current fires in California have burned 626,600 acres so far, according to Cal Fire. Nationwide, there were 102 large active wildfires, the vast majority of them in the West, which have burned more than 2 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Twenty-one wildfires in the United States prompted evacuation orders, the center said. Fire warnings and advisories were in effect Saturday for parts of Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Southern Idaho, Utah and California, the center said.

About 1.5 million people in the United States were affected by a red flag warning, or fire weather alert, issued by the National Weather Service on Saturday night. A red flag warning means that fire conditions are in the forecast — high temperatures, dry air and gusty winds.

Climate change could cause fire seasons to last longer, fires to be more intense and weather to become more extreme, according to earth scientists.

People on the front lines of the Park Fire, near the town of Paradise, which was devastated by the Camp Fire in 2018, experienced temperatures 10 to 15 degrees below Friday’s highs, the National Weather Service said.

More of the same was forecast through midweek, as a cool upper trough moved from west to east across California and beyond, the weather service said. But heat could return to the Chico area before the weekend, it said.

Jeremy Pierce, the state’s fire marshal, said cooler weather on Saturday allowed the Park Fire to “quiet down.” At a news conference, Pierce said firefighters were battling the flames again “as long as the weather holds.”