SALEM, Ore. — Wild­fire smoke that posed a health haz­ard to mil­lions choked the West Coast on Sat­ur­day as fire­fight­ers bat­tled dead­ly blazes that oblit­er­at­ed some towns and dis­placed tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, the lat­est in a series of calami­ties this year.

For peo­ple already endur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the result­ing eco­nom­ic fall­out and polit­i­cal ten­sions evi­dent in the Black Lives Mat­ter protests and far-right counter protests, the fires added a new lay­er of misery.

“What’s next? You have the protests, coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, now the wild­fires. What else can go wrong?” lament­ed Danielle Oliv­er, 40, of Hap­py Val­ley, south­east of Portland.

The death toll from the fires in Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton stood at 28 and was expect­ed to rise sharply. Most of the fatal­i­ties were in Cal­i­for­nia and Oregon.

Oregon’s emer­gency man­age­ment direc­tor said offi­cials were prepar­ing for a pos­si­ble “mass fatal­i­ty event” if many more bod­ies turn up in the ash. And the state fire mar­shal resigned after abrupt­ly being placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The state police super­in­ten­dent said the cri­sis demand­ed an urgent response that required a lead­er­ship change.

Oliv­er has an autoim­mune dis­or­der that makes her vul­ner­a­ble to wild­fire smoke, so she agreed to evac­u­ate. She was ner­vous about going to a shel­ter because of the virus, but sleep­ing in a car with her hus­band, 15-year-daugh­ter, two dogs and a cat was not a viable option.

The tem­per­a­ture checks and social dis­tanc­ing at the Amer­i­can Red Cross shel­ter helped put her mind at ease. Now the fam­i­ly waits, hop­ing their house will sur­vive. She has pre­vi­ous­ly expe­ri­enced homelessness.

“I’m tired. I’m tired of start­ing all over. Get­ting every­thing, work­ing for every­thing, then los­ing every­thing,” she said.

Those who still had homes were not safe in them. A half-mil­lion Ore­go­ni­ans were under evac­u­a­tion warn­ings or orders to leave. With air con­t­a­m­i­na­tion lev­els at his­toric highs, peo­ple stuffed tow­els under door jambs to keep smoke out. Some even wore N95 masks in their own homes.

Some com­mu­ni­ties resem­bled the bombed-out cities of Europe after World War II, with build­ings reduced to charred rub­ble piled atop black­ened earth. Res­i­dents either man­aged to flee as the flames closed in, or perished.

Mil­li­cent Catarancuic’s body was found near a car on her 5‑acre prop­er­ty in Berry Creek, Cal­i­for­nia. The flames came so quick­ly she did not have time to get out.

On Tues­day, she packed sev­er­al of her dogs and cats in the car but lat­er called her daugh­ter to say she decid­ed to stay. Fire­fight­ers had made progress bat­tling the blaze. The wind was calm. The flames still seemed far away. Then they rushed onto the property.

“I feel like, maybe when they passed, they had an army of cats and dogs with her to help her through it,” said her daugh­ter, Hol­ly Catarancuic.

In Ore­gon alone, more than 40,000 peo­ple have been evac­u­at­ed and about 500,000 are in dif­fer­ent lev­els of evac­u­a­tion zones, Gov. Kate Brown said.

Fires along Oregon’s Cas­cade Range grew Sat­ur­day, but at a slow­er rate than ear­li­er in the week, when strong east­er­ly winds act­ed like a bel­lows, push­ing two large fires — the Beachie Creek Fire and the River­side Fire — toward each oth­er and the state’s major pop­u­la­tion cen­ters, includ­ing Portland’s south­east­ern suburbs.

Fire man­agers did get a spot of good news: High­er humid­i­ty slowed the flames considerably.

In Cal­i­for­nia, a total of 28 active major fires have burned 4,375 square miles, and 16,000 fire­fight­ers are try­ing to sup­press the flames, Cal Fire Assis­tant Deputy Direc­tor Daniel Berlant said. Large wild­fires con­tin­ued to burn in north­east­ern Wash­ing­ton state too.

In all, 19 peo­ple have died in Cal­i­for­nia since wild­fires began break­ing out across the state in mid-August.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump will vis­it Cal­i­for­nia on Mon­day for a brief­ing on the West Coast fires, the White House announced.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Joe Biden and the gov­er­nors of Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton state — all Democ­rats — have said the fires are a con­se­quence of glob­al warming.

“We absolute­ly must act now to avoid a future defined by an unend­ing bar­rage of tragedies like the one Amer­i­can fam­i­lies are endur­ing across the West today,” Biden said.

The same smoke that paint­ed Cal­i­for­nia skies orange also helped crews cor­ral the state’s dead­liest blaze of the year by block­ing the sun, reduc­ing tem­per­a­tures and rais­ing humid­i­ty, offi­cials said.

Smoke cre­at­ed cool­er con­di­tions in Ore­gon too, but it was also blamed for mak­ing the dirt­i­est air in at least 35 years in some places. The air qual­i­ty index read­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing in Salem, the state cap­i­tal, was 512.

The scale nor­mal­ly goes from zero to 500.

“Above 500 is lit­er­al­ly off the charts,” said Lau­ra Gleim, a spokesper­son for the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Quality.

Because past air qual­i­ty was nev­er so poor, the government’s yard­stick for mea­sur­ing it capped out at 500, Gleim said. The depart­ment start­ed mon­i­tor­ing in 1985.

The weath­er con­di­tions that led up to the fires and fed the flames were like­ly a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion event, said Greg Jones, a pro­fes­sor and research cli­ma­tol­o­gist at Lin­field Uni­ver­si­ty in McMin­nville, Oregon.

A large high-pres­sure area stretch­ing from the desert South­west to Alas­ka brought strong winds from the east toward the West Coast, reduc­ing rel­a­tive humid­i­ty to as low as 8% and bring­ing desert-like con­di­tions, even to the coast, Jones said.

Instead of the off­shore flows that the Pacif­ic North­west nor­mal­ly enjoys, the strong east­er­ly winds pushed fires down the west­ern slopes of the Cas­cade Range.

It isn’t clear if glob­al warm­ing caused the con­di­tions, Jones said, but a warmer world can increase the like­li­hood of extreme events and con­tribute to their severity.

The smoke in Port­land filled the air with an acrid metal­lic scent like dull pen­nies. It was so thick that Ash­ley Kre­itzer could not see the road when she head­ed out to work as a ride-hail­ing driver.

“I couldn’t even see five feet ahead of me,” she said. “I was pan­ick­ing, I didn’t even know if I want­ed to go out.”

George Coble had no home to return to. He came with some of his employ­ees Sat­ur­day to a waste­land of charred tree trunks just out­side Mill City, Ore­gon. Coble lost every­thing: his fence-and-post busi­ness, five hous­es in a fam­i­ly com­pound and vin­tage cars, includ­ing a 1967 Mustang.

The fam­i­ly – three gen­er­a­tions that lived in the com­pound — evac­u­at­ed with sev­en peo­ple, three hors­es, five dogs and a cat.

“We’ll just keep work­ing and keep your head up and thank God every­body got out,” Coble said. “There are oth­er peo­ple that lost their fam­i­ly. Just be thank­ful for what you did get out with.”

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White­hurst report­ed from Port­land. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Gillian Flac­cus in Mill City, Ore­gon, Gene John­son in Seat­tle and Adam Beam in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia, con­tributed to this report.