Nearly 70,000 acres burning with almost every containing

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Thousands of fires have exploded through the Bay Area and Naples’ wine country, burning thousands of acres, forcing evacuations and sending residents an uncomfortable reminder that California’s fire season is well under way.

Persistent hot weather and windy conditions Tuesday complicated efforts to bring the infernos – some caused by rare weekend lightning storms – under control and send unusual smoke washes across East Bay and later on the peninsula from a fire in San Mateo County. A Spare the Air Alert was in operation across the Bay Area for both days.

As of Tuesday night, it was barely contained in one of the region’s plots – from a massive 35,000 acres burning over Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties to the 32,000-plus-acres fire in Napa County, threatening a wine region has already suffered during the coronavirus pandemic. However, the majority of the fires did not burn in densely populated areas.

The lack of containment, said CalFire information chairman Robert Foxworthy, was in part a result of how recently the fire broke out. But containment efforts have been further hampered by hot summer weather, which is expected to continue well into the week. And fire brigades have been thin-skinned since Sunday, starting fires on dry vegetation that turned into late summer sunshine.

In the immediate Bay Area, the fastest burning Marsh and Deer Zone Fires were the largest of 20 fires in what officials call the SCU Lightning Complex Fire. More than 500 firefighters battled the blaze, forcing roads and forcing residents to flee the area.

The Deer Zone Fires burned near Brentwood in Contra Costa County, while the Marsh Fire broke out just east of Milpitas in Santa Clara County. In southern San Mateo County, residents of communities east of Pescadero, in the Butano State Park area and the Butano Creek areas, were ordered to evacuate late Tuesday afternoon. That fire was part of the CZU August Lightning Complex, multiple blasts that grew to about 1,000 acres early Tuesday night and later prompted evacuations in the Boulder Creek area of ​​Santa Cruz County.

The region’s extensive fire department asked officials to extend an opinion on air quality through ‘at least’ Thursday, with the heaviest concentration of smoke expected in Dublin, Livermore and Pleasanton.

Steep, treacherous terrain posed challenges for crews fighting the winds, especially during the day. As the fires spread, firefighters concentrated on occupying their existing positions while trying to correlate the flames where possible. But with temperatures remaining in places in the triple digits, firefighters categorized the spread rate as “dangerous.”

Marsh Creek Road between Morgan Territory Road and Deer Valley Road remained closed Tuesday, as did Del Puerto Canyon Road between Mines Road and Diablo Parkway. Evacuees living near those roads were directed to the Brentwood Community Center, where city manager Tim Ogden said about 25 people sought refuge before the Red Cross placed them in local hotels.

Foxworthy was optimistic it would increase “in the next day or two”, but his opponent with the Santa Clara unit, Pam Temmermand, said on Tuesday that progress “would not happen today” for fires burning in the South Bay.

“The weather forecast is due to hot temperatures, low humidity,” Temmermand said.

To the north, several major fires broke out in Napa County on Monday – destroyed by deadly blasts in recent years – by consuming thousands of acres each, threatening wineries and displacing long-term residents, before exploding Tuesday night in large-scale as the LNU Lightning Complex fire to more than 32,000 acres. Elsewhere, dozens of smaller fires in the region required resources and attention.

The Hennessey Fire, which grew to 10,000 acres on Tuesday, had destroyed several structures and threatened hundreds more, including Nichelini Family Winery, the family’s oldest winery and family-run, built in 1890. In an update, CalFire said “extreme fire behavior” Was “continuing to challenge firefighting efforts.”

“It has not yet reached the winery,” fifth-generation winemaker Aimee Sunseri told this news organization. “We just support ourselves.”

The family has been preparing for the time since the Atlas Fire blew through the same region in 2017. Fire protection of the property has included removing underbrush and trees within a 100-foot radius of their facility and installing concrete water tanks holding up to 10,000 gallons of water around the property.

By late Tuesday, winds of up to 50 mph were driving the fire east-southeast to Mt. Vaca, and Solano County Fire Department sources send a fourth-alarm response to extinguish flames about a dozen miles northwest of Vacaville.

On Tuesday, Govin Newsom declared a statewide emergency and said California had secured federal subsidies to fight fires in Napa, Monterey and Nevada counties.

“We are committed to every available resource to keep communities safe as California fights over the state in these extreme conditions,” Newsom said in a statement.

Just south of the Bay Area, five lightning-burning fires burned in the Santa Cruz Mountains, covering about 1,000 acres. Those blows were also containing zero percent from Tuesday. And in Monterey County, the River Fire south of Salinas had grown to more than 4,000 acres, destroying several homes and forcing evictions. By Tuesday, firefighters had contained 10%, but a new fire southeast of Carmel Valley Village broke out at noon, prompting mandatory evacuations.

Further south, fires along the Central Coast and Los Angeles, as well as inland, near Riverside.

In any year, fire season can be devastating. But 2020 remains particularly dire.

The fires could well hamper efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic, said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert and professor emeritus at UC Berkeley who has been consulting with firefighters in the state.

“If you get COVID and you are exposed to a lot of particulate matter from the fires,” he said, “that will definitely make COVID less.”