Smoke From West Coast Wildfires Spreads to the East Coast

SEATTLE — The billowing wildfire smoke that has blanketed much of the West Coast with a caustic haze also began settling into the atmosphere thousands of miles away on Tuesday.

While more favorable weather has allowed firefighters to make some progress against the devastating blazes in Oregon, the crisis was far from over: The largest fires were still mostly uncontained, the air has been some of the most polluted on the planet for a week, and the state was setting up a mobile morgue as crews continued to sift through the rubble for missing people.

In California, where 25 people have died this year and 3.2 million acres — a modern record — have burned, officials had both successes and setbacks: Firefighters there contained two fires, one in Yuba County and the other north of Willits, and were trying to suppress 33 new blazes as stiff winds in the northeast pushed fires into new territory. There was still no significant rain in sight, and lands parched by warm weather remain at risk of igniting.

At the North Complex Fire, which has burned more than 270,000 acres northeast of Sacramento, winds whipped the flames across a clearing that had been plowed by bulldozers.