US wildfires turn full moon orange

WASHINGTON: Raging wildfires in the US northwest and southwestern Canada cast an orange tint on July’s full moon on Friday evening, as smoke from multiple blazes gusted toward the east.

In Washington, D.C., one view of the moon, as seen from the Washington Monument, showed a fully sized orb shifting colors and briefly turning orange. The silhouette of a Marine One helicopter flashed across the moon as it appeared to linger over federal buildings in the US capital.

Dozens of major wildfires are burning across parts of Oregon, Montana, Idaho and California, with Oregon’s Bootleg fire the most massive and the state’s third largest wildfire on records dating back to 1900.

As of Friday, the Bootleg fire, located about 250 miles south of Portland, had ripped through more than 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of drought-parched brush and timber and destroyed at least 67 homes near the California border. At its peak, an estimated 2,000 people were displaced by evacuations.