More than 1 million acres have burned in California since July, marking a difficult start to the fire season punctuated by a series of deadly blasts around the Bay Area that have destroyed hundreds of homes and left tens of thousands displaced.
Firefighters battled dangerous extinguishers from the Santa Cruz Mountains to winelands and beyond on Saturday, with a slight break in the weather Saturday afternoon amid warnings that more lightning – which ignited many of the fires – could return Sunday.
In all, more than 971,000 acres in Northern and Central California burned – the equivalent of more than 1,500 square miles, more than three times the size of the city of Los Angeles.
As of August 15, about a million acres had been burned, marking the beginning of a “lightning siege” in which 12,000 strikes began 585 new wildlife fires, officials said Saturday.
The blasts include the LNU Lightning Complex fire, which on more than 314,000 acres is the second largest fire in California history. The SCU Lightning Complex fire, currently covering more than 291,000 acres, is third-largest.
The fires, caused by strong winds, heat and low humidity, have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate.
At least 700 structures have been destroyed, and the fire-fanning weather conditions that record temperatures and thousands of lightning strikes in the past few days they are not expected to decrease anytime soon. Meanwhile, authorities report depleted resources, with manpower and tools spreading thinly due to the rising scale and number of fires across the state.
One of the biggest concerns was the CZU August Lightning Complex fire, which broke out in the distance from the mountainous southwest of Silicon Valley, on the border of San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. That fire burned 63,000 acres and forced the evacuation of at least 77,000 people, officials said Saturday morning. Officials evacuated the UC Santa Cruz campus and uttered concerns about some of the small mountain towns north of Santa Cruz, including Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek.
The CZU fire destroyed 97 structures and threatened more than 24,000 others. It is 5% contained, officials said Saturday morning.
The fire caused extensive damage at Big Basin Redwoods State Park and forced the evacuation of staff, campers and other visitors. The state park, the oldest in California, has suffered damage to its headquarters, campsites and historic core. Officials with the California Department of Parks and Recreation said the agency did not yet know the number of acres that had burned in the park and assessed the damage.
The fire threatened the communities of Pescadero and La Honda in San Mateo County. In Santa Cruz County, structures were lost in the Swanton Road area, and a Cal Fire station was under threat.
The evacuation zone for this fire has expanded rapidly and now includes the communities of Davenport, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Lompico and Felton, and residents of the Zayante Canyon. Officials also issued evacuation warnings for downtown Scotts Valley, a mountainous city of about 12,000 people just north of Santa Cruz along Highway 17.
On Friday night, the weary, equipment-confirmed crew of Ben Lomond’s volunteer firefighting team were informed by Cal Fire in the mountainous, airy, and unfinished kitchen of the mountain town, along the city’s main intersection.
They were told that Cal Fire models in the next 48 to 72 hours suggested the fire would move downtown Boulder Creek. If the crews could not stop the fire there, CalFire would pull its reinforcements and catch the fire in the valley below the valley – via Brookdale, Ben Lomond and Felton – towards Route 17, the high highway of the mountain that San Jose and Santa connect Cruz.
“No one will stop fighting that fire,” said Chief of the Fire Department Harold Schapelhouman, who was in Boulder Creek early Saturday morning.
“These guys are going to keep fighting,” he said of the volunteer firefighters. ‘That’s exactly what they do. They take the knocks and come right back. ‘
The Schapelhouman district provides reinforcements. On Friday night, his crew brought up a water supply, rig, and several pallets of water and Gatorade for the exhausted crews.
They were greeted with cheers.
The men and women fighting the fires in the mountains are a saved crew. Most of them work for other cities and towns in the Bay Area – such as San Jose, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Redwood City – as full-time firefighters and first responders.
For many, Friday was their day off. But instead of sleeping or taking shelter, they pushed through the rough, mountainous terrain borders and extinguished fires wherever they could.
‘This is my house. These are our neighbors. There’s no way I would not fight here, “said Todd Ellis, captain of Ben Lomond’s volunteer fire department, referring to the informal terms Cal Fire uses to describe fire zones.
Devastated by Cal Fire’s briefing, he said nothing would stop him from fighting for his city.
Carl Kustin, a volunteer with the Boulder Creek Fire Department agrees.
‘We do not do this for money. We do this because we love our neighbors. We love our crews. And for us, there is nothing more inspiring than helping others and using everything we have to support people and communities, ”he said.
Kustin is a legend among the fire departments of these mountain towns. He and Schapelhouman were responding to the Oklahoma City 9/11 bombings and Hurricane Katrina, among other major U.S. disasters.
Most of the firefighters were deployed as first responders in the vicinity of the nation.
Cal Fire Incident Commander Sean Kavanaugh said the sheer number of fires statewide meant the fire zone in Sonoma, Lake, Napa, Solano and Yolo counties did not receive the manpower it normally would.
“We’re used to a lot of resources, and that’s not where we are today,” he said. “With how many big fires we’re having all over Northern California, we’re just one small piece of the bigger picture.”
The LNU Lightning Complex fire has burned a combined 314,207 acres of black, destroyed 560 structures and evacuated nonessential personnel from Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and patients from Adventist Health St. Hospital. Helena in Napa County. Four civilians died.
There were about 1,429 personnel fighting the fire on Saturday, which Kavanaugh contrasted with the Mendocino Complex fire in 2018, which drew about 5,000 people, and the 2017 Wine Country fires, to which almost 6,000 firefighters were assigned.
Still, the fire remains the state’s top priority for resources as they become available, Shana Jones, Cal Fire unit chief, said Saturday.
“Within an incident of this magnitude and complexity, and with all the fire activity throughout the state, all of our resources remain stretched to a capacity we have not seen in recent history,” she said.
On the eastern edge of San Jose, the SCU Lightning Complex fire burned 291,968 acres at multiple locations generally east of Silicon Valley and the East Bay and west of the Central Valley.
The fire started as 20 separate extinguishers, but merged into three, mostly burning through grass and ranchlands. About 6,000 people were ordered to evacuate, and roughly 20,000 structures were threatened.
Authorities were working on a change of weather early on Sunday morning that could lead to rapid growth of fire. Meteorologists predicted that starting at 5 a.m., winds would pick up, humidity would drop and more dry lightning could strike, said Josh Rubinstein, public information manager for Cal Fire.
“Those three things help drive or change fire behavior,” Rubinstein said. “That the message to the crews working out at the moment is to have a greater awareness.”
Like other fire officers, those who managed the incident were also struggling with depleted workforce and equipment, he said.
“No fire has the resources they want right now,” he said. “This fire here, we would probably have 25 helicopters on, and we have five. Because there are other areas that need them more desperately than we do. “
He said the state will continue to assign aircraft and crews to areas where fire poses the greatest life risk.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint – and not on just this fire, but some of the surrounding fires we’re dealing with,” he said.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office also issued an evacuation warning Thursday afternoon occupies the areas of Philbrook Reservoir and Inskip. The province is fighting its own Butte Lightning Complex fire, a collection of 34 confirmed lightning-causing fires that have burned a combined 2,623 acres.
Also burned in California the river fire, which consumed more than 44,000 acres in steep mountainous terrain south of Salinas in Monterey County, destroyed 16 structures, damaged eight others and forced mandatory evacuations, according to Cal Fire.
At least 3,000 structures remain threatened by the blaze, which contained 12% as of Saturday morning.
The Carmel fire, burning southwest of the river fire, burned more than 5,523 acres and destroyed 32 structures, fire officials said.
In Marin County, the Woodward fire had burned 2,259 acres in the Point Reyes National Seashore and was 5% contained as of Saturday morning. Two firefighters with the county fire department were rescued by helicopter after flames trampled them on a ridgeline Friday night.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, which posted video of the night’s dramatic rescue online, said firefighters were about 75 yards from the blazing flames, making their own strong, gusty wind that intensified. when the helicopter approached the flame.
A tactical officer was able to hook both firefighters to a line 100 feet back from the helicopter, which laid all three to safety. “Sometimes even First Responders need a First Responder,” the Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook.
