Hari Sreenivasan:
Firefighters from across the country began arriving in California to help fight some of the largest wildfires in the state’s history.
There are more than 550 fires burning throughout the state, but three clusters of fires in Northern California cause the most damage.
Together, these three extinguishers, which consist of dozens of fires each, have more than 1,045 square miles as of this morning.
There are currently more than 12,000 people helping to fight the fire. Each of the three large blisters is 15 percent or less.
To date, more than 500 structures have been destroyed, more than 100,000 people are under evacuation files, and at least six people have been killed.
The fires were started by lightning earlier this week. Forecasters said there was a chance of more thunderstorms this weekend, which could bring wind and more lightning.
The massive amounts of smoke and ash from the extinguishers were visible on satellite images, making the air unusual for breathing around the San Francisco Bay Area.
For more, we caught up yesterday with reporter Julia Sulek of Bay Area News Group.
She was in the town of Bonny Doon, northwest of Santa Cruz, where the CZU lightning complex had burned 57,000 acres, and was only 2 percent occupied at the time we spoke.
You have gone from fire to fire in this region. Why does this happen so often?
