Firefighters and planes from 10 states began arriving in California Friday to help tired crews fight some of the biggest fire in state history as weekend water threatens to renew the advance of flames that have killed six and killed hundreds of homes burned.
Some 560 wildfires burned throughout the state, but many were small and remote. Most of the damage was from three clusters of firefighters that destroyed forest and countryside in the wine country and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Those complexes, consisting of dozens of fires, exploded on a large scale. Together, they had burned 991 square miles and destroyed more than 500 homes and other buildings, firefighters said. At least 100,000 people were under evacuation orders.
Two Bay Area clusters, the LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex, became the second- and third-largest wildfires in recent state history per size, respectively, according to Cal Fire records.
The third blaze, the CZU Lightning Complex, is in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties.
The fires were started by lightning. Cooler, humid weather overnight helped firefighters build ground against the fires, but the National Water Service released fire water to the entire Bay Area and central coast from Sunday morning on Tuesday. Forecasters said there was a chance that thunderstorms would bring more lightning and unfair showers.
More than 12,000 personnel battled fires around the state, aided by helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. By Friday, the state fire department, Cal Fire, had called out 96% of the available fire engines. Reinforcements began to arrive.
The number of personnel assigned to the LNU complex, in the heart of the wine country north of San Francisco, more than doubled from 580 to more than 1,400 and nearly 200 fire engines were on the scene, firefighters said.
“I’m glad to see the leaps we have today,” said Sean Kavanaugh, commander of Cal Fire.
That could help crews make further progress against the fire, which contained just 15%. Most evacuations for the city of Vacaville were canceled. The fire threat there was reduced after reaching the outskirts of the city.
“I feel like we’re standing on our feet, standing up straight and actually moving a little bit forward,” Kavanaugh said.
However, the number of major fires was “huge” and had put “heavy penalties” on firefighters in western states, he said. Nevada and Arizona, for example, fought major barking this week when a heat wave swept west.
Governor Gavin Newsom said 10 states were sending personnel and equipment. The governor also said he was reaching out to Canada and Australia.
“We have more people, but it’s not enough,” Newsom said.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, about 1,000 firefighters fought a fire 10 times the size it would typically cover, said Dan Olsen, a Cal Fire spokesman.
With tight springs, houses burned in remote places without supervision. Cal Fire Chief Mark Brunton pleaded with residents to stop fighting fires on their own, saying that just causing more problems for the professionals.
“We had three separate rescues yesterday that pulled away our vital, very few resources,” he said.
But Peter Koleckai credits a neighbor, not arsonists, with rescuing his home in a rural area, where dozens of homes were reduced to smoldering ruins.
‘We were here at three o’clock in the morning and the fire brigade was just gone. They’re just gone, ‘he said.
Koleckai said he reached for a fire department and said a fire department fire broke out next to a house.
‘They never went up there and defeated the whole house, took the house out,’ he said.
A neighbor with a high-pressure hose, arson equipment and a generator saved his home, Koleckai said.
Cal Fire Battalion Chief Mike Smith typically said a wildfire of the size that would burn through the region would have 10 or even 20 times as many firefighters.
“We do absolutely everything we can,” he said.
The death toll has reached at least six. Three bodies were found Thursday in a burning house in Napa province, said Henry Wofford, a sheriff’s spokesman.
A man died in the neighboring province of Solano, and a Pacific Gas & Electric utility company was found dead in a car in the Vacaville area. Also on Wednesday, a helicopter pilot died in an accident when he fell water on a blister in Fresno county.
Smoke and ash blowing from the fire have grown in the air throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and along California’s beautiful central coastline.
