Northern California was defeated Sunday for more lightning strikes that could intensify the hundreds of burns caused by the region, which has already consumed more than 1 million acres.
The death toll from the fires, which began after thousands of lightning strikes last week, rose to six Sunday when authorities in Santa Cruz County found the body of a 70-year-old man in the mountains.
Chris Clark, chief replacement for the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office, told reporters that the man was found by a helicopter in an area near the CZU Lightning Fire, which grew to 67,000 acres and was five percent contained. Clark did not identify the man, saying his family still needed to be informed.
“It’s one of the darkest periods we’ve been through this fire,” Clark said.
JOSH EDELSON / AFP – Getty Images
The National Water Service, meanwhile, issued its biggest fire alert, a red flag warning, from the Oregon border to the Central Coast until Monday afternoon when remnants of Hurricane Genevieve hit the Pacific coast. Forecasters said frequent lightning was possible with merry, unjust wind and a little to no rain.
“We could see a repeat of what we saw last week – nearly 12,000 lightning strikes,” Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said in a briefing Sunday.
The previous strikes were part of a rare summer thunderstorm that sparked wildfires throughout Northern California, a region that saw record-low rainfall over the winter and a heat wave following the storm.
President Donald Trump declared a major disaster in the state Saturday because nearly 250,000 people remained under evacuation controls in the region, Berlant said. Hundreds of buildings are on fire, according to CalFire.
NBB Bay Area reported that a sprawling smoke that swept over much of the Bay Area created one of the worst air quality on the planet.
Two fires that started during the storm are now the second and third largest in California history – the LNU Lightning Complex, which reached 341,243 acres northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area by Sunday afternoon, and the SCU Lightning Complex, which is 339,968 acres had burned east of San Jose.
The fires were contained 17 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
Fourteen thousand firefighters worked to contain nearly 600 firefighters in California. The possibility of more wildfires comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom last week acknowledged that the recent round of lightning strikes had already stretched the state’s resources.
On Friday, Newsom said the state had asked Australia and Canada for help. National Guard soldiers are deployed in the effort, Berlant said, and counties and cities in the region have also dispatched firefighters and fire engines.
States across the West have sent dozens of additional fire engines, Berlant said, and hundreds more have been requested.
