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By JANIE HAR
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – California firefighters are cautiously optimistic after avoiding a major thunderstorm, but urge residents to stay out of evacuation areas and prepare for days away from home as three wildfires massifs in San Francisco Bay are raging, suffocating. the area looks smoky.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week will be pivotal as more than 14,000 firefighters take on 17 large fire complexes, mostly in northern California, where wildfires have surrounded the city of San Francisco on three sides, burning coastal redwoods that have never been burned. The forest fires, all caused by lightning, have been burning for a week.
“We are dealing with different climatic conditions which cause fires like we have not seen in modern recorded history,” he said on Monday.
A warning about dry lightning and gusty winds that could have sparked more fires was lifted for the San Francisco Bay Area on Monday morning, a huge relief to fire commanders who said the weather was helping their efforts as firefighters arrived from out of state. Temperatures should still be warm this week.
But officials warned the danger was far from over, and called the fires complex and large-scale. They urged residents to stay out of the evacuated areas and warned looters they would be arrested if captured.
“It’s still very dangerous in there,” Jonathan Cox, deputy fire chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said of the fire north of Santa Cruz. . “We have failed bridges, old wooden bridges that failed that may not look faulty” to drivers.
Not knowing if her house is still standing is the hardest part right now, says Barbara Brandt, a Boulder Creek resident who fled the Santa Cruz area fire on Tuesday night.
“The last few days have been a roller coaster ride,” she says. “You get conflicting reports. You don’t know what your life is going to be like. We don’t know when we can get home, but we know it won’t be for a long time.
When Brandt evacuated with his 94-year-old father, they thought the order was just a precaution. It was smoky, but not the huge fire complex it is now. Her cats weren’t inside so she left without them, thinking they would be back soon.
She returned on Wednesday to put her cats in the house and feed her chickens. On Thursday she came back again – this time to catch the cats.
North of San Francisco in the wine country, Tim Ireland, 48, and Sherri Johnston, 47, were returning to their destroyed home in Healdsburg, Sonoma County to search for one of their dogs. The dog refused to get in the car when they fled.
“We only got out with a car full of clothes, guns, a safe, all of our electronics, a dog and two cats,” he said.
California has had more than 13,000 lightning strikes since August 15, causing more than 600 wildfires statewide that have burned more than 1.2 million acres, or 4,875 square miles (4,856 square kilometers), said Daniel Berlant, deputy assistant manager of Cal Fire.
The burn area is larger than the size of Rhode Island and not quite the size of Delaware.
More than 1,200 buildings have been destroyed, although the number is set to rise as residents are allowed to return to neighborhoods and inspectors gain more insight into the destruction.
A fifth body was found over the weekend in the aftermath of the wildfire, bringing the death toll from the blazes to seven. In addition, authorities in Santa Cruz announced on Sunday that the body of a man from 70 years old had been found in a remote area called Last Chance. Police had to use a helicopter to reach the remote area of about 40 houses at the end of a steep and windy dirt road north of the town of Santa Cruz.
Among the victims were Mary Hintemeyer, 70, of Winters, Calif., Her boyfriend Leo McDermott and her son Tom, Hintemeyer’s son Robert McNeal said.
McNeal told KPIX-TV he lost contact with his mother on Tuesday night as the fires gathered pace. He said his mother tried to get to town earlier today but returned to a roadblock where authorities said if she passed she would not be allowed to return. She returned home to pick up her boyfriend, who was in a wheelchair.
Authorities found their remains among the ruins of the Napa County property on Wednesday, he said.
“Get out, don’t wait,” McNeal told the TV station, urging people to follow evacuation orders. “If you think it will be too much to make your sprinklers before you get out of there, forget them too. Forget it. Get out. Get out. It’s not worth it.
A utility worker found unresponsive in his vehicle in Solano County while helping fire crews also died last week, but authorities have yet to reveal the cause of death.
Berlant, with Cal Fire, said about 170,000 people remain evacuated after around 50,000 were allowed to return home from Sunday.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Chris Clark said three people were arrested Sunday night in evacuated areas, two on outstanding warrants and a woman “seen walking around with a bag of money. dos ”, which was in a closed area and was not a local.
The governor on Monday called the reports of looting “disgusting” and applauded prosecutors for taking a firm stand.
The blaze in the wine country north of San Francisco and another southeast of the city that burns across seven counties became in one week two of the three largest fires in state history, each burning approximately 550 square miles (1,425 square kilometers).
The fire in the wine region was the deadliest and most destructive blaze, killing five and destroying 871 homes and other buildings.
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Associated Press editors John Antczak and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco, and Aron Ranen in Healdsburg contributed to this report.
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