When Friday smelled unpredictable flames across the Bay Area, exhausted firefighters and evacuated residents set themselves up for what promises to be a long battle.
With more than 560 fires in the state, the latest threat is the possibility of another round of lightning as firefighters struggle to gain the upper hand over the massive fires burning from Santa Cruz to Lake Berryessa. As of Friday, flames had engulfed 500,000 acres in the Bay Area – nearly five times the size of the city of San Jose – burning 75,000 homes and businesses and forcing 115,000 people to evacuate.
Firefighters reported progress in both North Bay and Santa Cruz County, with a thick marine layer and lower winds helping slow the spread of the CZU complex of fires, by saving Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond, Brookdale and Felton and a solid aircraft to allow retardant on the 50,000-acre blaze for the first time. Up in the North Bay, firefighters increased the occupancy of the larger LNU complex, which grew overnight by just 4,000 acres across Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Lake and Yolo counties, and lifted evacuation orders for Vacaville.
But those trends could change quickly as more threats fade away, including the possibility of another round of lightning and thunder this weekend, as tired firefighters are already struggling in hot, dry conditions and rough terrain.
“I’m hoping for good news, but it’s going to take a long time,” said Shana Jones, Cal Fire Unit Chief. ‘We’re not out of the woods. Not far. “
During the day, the SCU complex in South and East Bay passed through another 70,000 acres. That blaze now occupies 220,000 acres, with most of the flames burning in rural San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. But the Calaveras Zone fires, just over the hills of San Jose, forced people on the eastern edge of the city limits to flee and asked Mayor Sam Liccardo to urge residents of Alum Rock, Evergreen and The Villages to do so earlier. weekend.
On Friday, the Walbridge Fire in Sonoma County appeared as the main priority of the fire department, heading south toward Guerneville and Rio Nido. Evacuation orders have been issued for much of the Russian river basin, with warnings east of Healdsburg and Highway 101.
“It’s all narrow roads and hills and trees,” said Scott Ross, spokesman for Cal Fire Lake-Napa Unit. “It’s just a nightmare to try to evacuate that area … and get in there and lay everything out.”
Conditions are only expected to increase. Beginning Sunday night through Tuesday, the National Water Service is protected from dry thunderstorms over the Bay Area as a tropical storm moves north, meteorologist Roger Gass said. Just like last weekend – when more than 12,000 lightning strikes occurred over 560 fires across the state – the rainfall is expected to be minimal.
And to top it all off, the useful marine layer that cools the South Bay is expected to ebb, making way for another round of soaring warm temperatures in the early to mid-90s over virtually the entire inland bay area.
“We’ll see the ingredients out, but we’ll have to see if they come in handy,” Gass said of the potential storms over the weekend. “Unfortunately, last weekend everything went awry.”
All three major fires in the Bay Area, and the LNU complex in particular, are aimed at getting more resources from Southern California because fires are contained there and engines are available, Williams said. Statewide, about 12,000 firefighters have been deployed and Cal Fire uses 96% of all available resources – including some engines that the state was in the process of selling.
The state has also received help from Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Nevada and New Mexico, and had reached out to Canada and Australia, Govin Newsom said during a news conference Friday. However, overworked firefighters say it will not be enough.
“We can probably expect a lot from the same, which is unfortunate because there are not many resources that will be available,” said a firefighter who traveled from outside the Bay Area to help with the fires of the CZU Complex. “Everyone needs to work more hours than normal and be on the line longer – double shifts, do triple shifts,” he added.
Californians who have been through multiple fires in recent years grew more anxious as they imagined the days. After dealing with his second evacuation warning in less than a year, Carl Downey said he would consider leaving his home in Healdsburg if he did not have a reverse mortgage on his apartment. The 74-year-old also evacuated during the 2019 Kincade Fire.
Now he has packed a suitcase with three days of clothes and is ready to go, with a box containing his checkbook and other important papers in his truck.
“I’m getting tired of it,” he said.
Others channeled potential losses into acts of benevolence. When the evacuation board arrived in Felton on Thursday, workers at Wild Roots Market on Highway 9 knew they had a problem: About $ 50,000 in perishable inventory would not survive a closure that would be expected to take up to two weeks.
“I call all the people I knew knew all this food would be wasted if I did not do something,” said Nellie Donovan, manager of the natural food grocery store and bakery. “We are trying what we can to save and feed the people in need.”
The Zayante and Felton fire brigades have been battling fresh food for firefighters in the mountains west of Felton and other cities in San Lorenzo.
At an evacuation center in Half Moon Bay, Rita Mancera, director of a nonprofit organization that helps families in southern San Mateo County, said evacuees ranged from parking lot parking to stoic pragmatism, telling her, “We’ve been like this. much already, we are going through this now and we will be fine. ”
Even as she raced to find hotels as gift cards for families in Pescadero, La Honda and somewhere along the coast that the fires were on the run, Mancera evacuated her own husband and a 13-year-old son. She worries about how to help a low-income community that has already been hit hard by the pandemic and now faces the prospect of weeks of evacuation and uncertainty.
“Even without loss of life, it’s a loss of security, another trauma on top of another trauma,” Mancera said.
Ethan Baron, Emily DeRuy, Marisa Kendall, Maggie Angst and Evan Webeck contributed to this report.
