Dozens of people reported dead and thousands of homes incinerated in days

US officials warned Friday of potential "mass" fatalities as more than 20,000 firefighters from across the country battled sprawling deadly wildfires up and down the West Coast that have scorched a landscape the size of New Jersey.

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A prediction of cooler weather offered some hope of respite in coming days, but the true scale of the destruction from dozens of massive blazes in California, Oregon and Washington states remained hard to gauge.

"We're preparing for a mass fatality incident based on what we know and the number of structures that have been lost," warned Andrew Phelps, director of the office of emergency management in Oregon on Friday. Read more at i24