California burns out: 250,000 under evacuation boards amid three Bay Area lights – live | American news

Firefighters and residents of Northern California received a boost this morning as predicted bad weather so far in the state.

Humidity increased on Monday, the Associated Press reported, and there was no return of the lightning strike that ignited the infernos a week earlier.

The area surrounding San Francisco Bay remained under extreme fire danger warning until late Monday afternoon amid the possibility of lightning and light winds, but firefighters said the weather had helped their efforts so far.

“Mother Nature has helped us a lot,” said Billy See, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Commander for a complex of fires burning south of San Francisco.

However, the National Water Service has maintained a “red flag” warning for the drought-affected area of ​​Northern California.

That includes extremely dangerous fire conditions, including high temperatures, low humidity, lightning and wind gusts up to 105 km / h, which officials said “could result in dangerous and unpredictable fire behavior”.

ABC News has divided this video of firefighters driving through a wildfire. According to the news channel, 14,000 firefighters are now deployed in California.

The San Lorenzo Valley water district, 70 miles south of San Francisco and 10 miles north of Santa Cruz, has lost 4.5 million gallons of water after fire melted a main water main.

KSBW8 reported that the five-kilometer-long pipe was melting due to intense heat from the counties of San Mateo and Santa Cruz.

“Officials with the SLV Water District had to redirect the flow of water so firefighters fighting the CZU Lightning Complex Fire will have access to water,” KSBW8 reported. Firefighters have enough water to continue the extinguishing.

The main flood of water has affected about 8,000 residents, who have been evacuated due to the extinguishing.

The Ranch Fire, which burned in California in 2018, is the largest fire in the state’s history.

According to the latest statistics from the California Department of Forest and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), two of the fires that burned outside the San Francisco Bay Area are not far behind.

The LNU fire, in a wine country north of San Francisco, is now just over 350,000 acres, and contained 22%, according to Cal Fire:

While the SCU Lightning Complex, southeast of San Francisco, spans 347,196. It is 10% contained.

That puts the two blows on second and third in the state’s largest fires in history.

Overgrown by a rare lightning storm and fueled by hot, windy weather, the fires soon spread to the Sierra Nevada, southern California, and regions north, east and south of San Francisco, writes the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh.

Maanvi has written an in-depth statement on how the fires started and started raging out of control:

A combination of extreme weather conditions sets the stage, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. First came a record-breaking, sustained heat wave across the state. Temperatures in Death Valley hit 130F and the state saw rolling blackouts for the first time in nearly two decades as millions of Californians sought to cool their homes to the electric net.

Next, a tropical storm in the Pacific Ocean swept toward California, causing a rare lightning storm that swept California more than 10,800 times over a three-day period, causing small fires to break over the Bay Area and northern California. Then the humidity picked up and wind picked up, stopping the small flames until they erupted into full-blown infernos.

Read the full piece from Maanvi here:

Firefighters in California not only risk the blisters that have besieged the state – they also pose a potential threat to coronavirus, for themselves and others.

Public health officials are increasingly concerned that the 12,000 firefighters – many of them from the state – could trigger a super-spreader coronavirus event as they tackle the fires, the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

The worries are multifaceted. Most important: Nobody wants firefighters to get sick for their own sake. The state cannot afford to recruit crews of duty when staff resources are so thin. With staff coming from all over the state or other parts of the country to the region, public health fears are feared of a “super-spreader” event if someone infected on the front lines brings the virus home.

According to the Chronicle, “the arsonists present a unique challenge”.

Social distance is difficult because the firefighters live in small shelters where they sleep and eat together. They travel to extinguishers in trucks with the windows rolled up, the newspaper said, and are often unable to wear face masks due to the extreme heat.

“It’s the perfect storm: Bring people all over the western United States to work together in a communal setting, and then send them back,” said John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infection specialist who also advised the U.S. Forest Service.

Nearly 250,000 people are under fire evacuation warnings in California as three huge fires rage through the San Francisco Bay Area.

Firefighters support more damage Monday, as the National Water Service (NWS) warned that fast-moving storms could lead to a risk of new fires.

Some 650 fires are burning in California, triggered by nearly 12,000 lightning strikes across the state in the past week and accelerated by a record-breaking heat wave.

The NWS has issued a ‘red flag’ warning about swans in Northern California, valid until Monday night. It warned that extreme fire conditions, including high temperatures, low humidity and wind speeds up to 65 mph, could result in “dangerous and unpredictable fire behavior”.

The three fires in the Bay Area raged over more than 200,000 acres, destroying nearly 1,000 homes and structures. Seven people are murdered.

During one of the three fires, the CZU Lightning Complex fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains, south of San Francisco, authorities announced the discovery of the body of a 70-year-old man in a remote area named Last Chance on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the LNU Lightning Complex fire, in wine country north of San Francisco, and SCU Lightning Complex, southeast of the city, have grown into two of the three largest fires in state history, both exceeding 500 sides. kilometers burn.

The LNU fire has been the deadliest and most destructive, accounting for five dead and 845 destroyed homes and other buildings.