Some people just west of Vacaville – a city of about 100,000 inhabitants between San Francisco and Sacramento – were ordered to evacuate when fires broke out in the hills.
“There are several locations where people are trying to get out, and we are working our way to them,” a Solano County sheriff told CNN. How many people were hit there was not immediately clear.
That fire has been burning in parts of the state among dozens of firefighters. They come amid a brutal heat wave and power outages – both intentional and unintentional – as the power grid struggles to keep up with demand.
The Vacaville area fire is part of the LNU complex fire – a series of wildfires that have burned more than 32,000 acres in the northern Bay areas of Napa, Sonoma and Solano, state and county officials said.
Just west of Vacaville, evacuations were ordered early Wednesday for all of Pleasants Valley Road and its connecting streets, as well as the English Hills area, the city fire department said.
on Twitter.
Excessive heat
The fires come as California battles what some experts call historic weather conditions. Nearly 45 million people in the West were on Wednesday under a disproportionately hot warning as hot advice. High temperatures, light winds and low humidity are predicted, conditions that are likely to contribute to a significant spread of both new and existing wildfires.
More than two tens of thousands of wildfires burned across the state on Wednesday, totaling tens of thousands of acres. In Northern California, where some fires were started by lightning and burned more than 145,000 acres, evacuations were ordered in several counties because the blowing structures threatened.
Evacuation orders in California
In Monterey County, south of San Jose, evacuations were issued for the Carmel Fire, burning southeast of Carmel Valley Village Tuesday, CNN branch KSBW reported. The Carmel Fire burned about 1,200 acres, CAL FIRE reported, and was not contained at all.
Later Tuesday, the Monterey Sheriff’s Office announced an a
mandatory evacuation due to another fire, the River Fire. The River Fire has burned more than 4,500 acres and is about 7% lush, according to CAL FIRE. Both of the fires are in Monterey County, said the department, which is located about 90 miles from San Jose.
California firefighters announced
more evacuations late Tuesday night for the state’s largest set of fires, the SCU Lightning Complex.
That is about 20 separate flames burning in steep, rough terrain, driven by the extreme heat and low humidity, according to the department. More than 35,000 acres have been burned and two people injured, firefighters said.
And on Wednesday, temperatures, which firefighters say are expected to rise to the triple digits, will not help.
“Firefighters are seeing benefits this evening from cooler temperatures to build and reinforce containment lines across all zones,” the department said late Tuesday. The fires contained about 4%.
Evacuation orders have been issued for parts of Alameda County and Contra Costa County.
37,000 without power
Meanwhile, more than 37,000 customers were without power across the state, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) told CNN Tuesday night.
“Extreme demand for heat and electricity has caused power outages in parts of Los Angeles,” wrote Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
on Twitter. LADWP, the nation’s largest municipal utility with a total of 1.5 million customers in the City of Los Angeles, said about 12,000 of those customers were in the dark Tuesday night.
“The disruptions we experienced last night are related to broken equipment in the field, transformers and distribution stations becoming too hot, which has led to many localized strikes,” a LADWP spokesman said. “Our crews are there and will make overnight progress.”
Separately, PG&E said 25,717 of its customers are also without power in Northern and Central California.
7 heat records broken
With an excessive heat wave across the state, California officials said at least seven temperature records were broken.
Burbank broke its previous record of 1986, beating 109 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, while Paso Robles broke a more than 50-year record with a whopping 111 degrees on Tuesday. Camarillo, Long Beach and Woodland Hills were also included in the record-breakers
areas. In a Twitter warning, the National Weather Service said that “summer is hot, but this is different.”
“These are record high temperatures in what is typically one of the hottest times of the year,” the service said.
sei. “These are dangerous conditions that must be taken seriously to prevent heat-related illness.”
Historic fire scoring parts of Colorado
California is not the only state for spreading fires. In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday that he will take executive action to reduce the state’s fire risk as several burns remain out of control.
At least four blowers have already burned more than 130,000 acres.
The largest, the Pine Gulch Fire, was caused by lightning and burned over 87,000 acres and was 7% contained as of late Tuesday.
According to CNN affiliate KMGH, it is the third largest wildfire in the state’s history.
The Grizzly Creek Fire, on about 27,000 acres, is 4% contained.
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