#West Coast wildfire death toll rises to 17 as blazes remain uncontained

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Burnt hillsides from the Cold Springs Firecan are seen near Omak, Washington.
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At least 17 people have reportedly died in the wildfires ripping through the West Coast as the blazes continue burning out of control.

The death toll, reported by ABC News, could rise as the constellation of wildfires burning Northern California, Oregon and Washington remain uncontained.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown warned that the destruction will likely worsen as 500,000 Oregonians — more than 10 percent of the state’s population — have been forced to evacuate.

“We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state,” Brown tweeted earlier in the day, tying the blazes to impacts of climate change.

“Currently there are fires burning more than 900,000 acres,” she went on. “To put that into perspective, over the last 10 years, an average of 500,000 acres burn in an entire year. We’ve seen nearly double that in 3 days.”

In Washington, wildfires burned through 937 square miles this week, devastating the farm town of Malden.

“We’ve had this trauma all over Washington,” Inslee said during a tour of the town, according to KHQ-TV. “But this is the place where the whole heart of the town was torn out.”

Earlier Friday, the August Complex fire in California became the largest in state history after it scorched at least 471,000 acres — an area more than twice the size of New York City.

More than 14,000 firefighters are working to control some 29 wildfires in the state, officials said.

Gov. Brown said five towns in Oregon were “substantially destroyed,” including the cities of Talent and Phoenix in Jackson County as another two dozen fires raged in the state.