‘It goes up like tinder’: unprecedented blazes envelop Alaska

Across the state, 264 individual fires are burning and it is on track to break its 2004 record of 6.5m acres destroyed

Alaska has seen more than 500 forest fires since the beginning of April, which have forced the evacuation of mining camps, villages and remote cabins.

By 15 June, more than 1m acres (405,000 hectares) in the state had already gone up in flames, about the amount of acres that would normally burn in an entire fire season. By mid-July, more than 3m acres of land had been torched, putting the state at risk of breaking its 2004 record of 6.5m acres (2.6m hectares) burned.