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More than one million acres have burned in California since July, marking a disturbing early start to the fire season which was punctuated by a series of deadly bay area fires that destroyed hundreds of homes and sent tens of thousands of people to flee.
Firefighters battled dangerous fires from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the wine country and beyond on Saturday, taking advantage of a small break in the weather on Saturday amid warnings that more lightning – which has sparked many fires – could come back on Sunday.
In all, more than 971,000 acres burned in northern and central California – the equivalent of over 1,500 square miles, more than three times the size of the city of Los Angeles.
Nearly a million acres have burned since Aug. 15, which marked the start of a “lightning siege” in which 12,000 strikes sparked 585 new wildfires, officials said on Saturday.
The fires include the fire at the LNU Lightning Complex, which, on more than 314,000 acres, is the second largest blaze in California history. The SCU Lightning Complex fire, which currently covers more than 291,000 acres, is the third largest.
The fires, fueled by high winds, heat and low humidity, have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate.
At least 700 structures were destroyed and the weather conducive to the fire which brought high temperatures and thousands of lightning strikes over the past few days it is not expected to decrease anytime soon. Meanwhile, authorities are reporting depleted resources, with manpower and tools depleted by the scale and number of fires statewide.
One of the biggest concerns was the fire at the CZU August Lightning Complex, which raged in the remote mountainous region southwest of Silicon Valley on the border of San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. The fire burned 63,000 acres and forced the evacuation of at least 77,000 people, officials said Saturday morning. Officials have evacuated the UC Santa Cruz campus and expressed concerns about some of the small mountain towns north of Santa Cruz, including Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek.
The CZU fire destroyed 97 structures and threatened more than 24,000 others. It is 5% content, officials said Saturday morning.
The fire caused significant damage at Big Basin Redwoods State Park and forced the evacuation of staff, campers and other visitors. California’s oldest state park suffered damage to its headquarters, campgrounds and historic center. California Department of Parks and Recreation officials said the agency did not yet know the number of acres that had burned in the park and was assessing the damage.
The blaze threatened the communities of Pescadero and La Honda in San Mateo County. In Santa Cruz County, structures were lost in the Swanton Road area and a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection station was under threat.
The evacuation zone as this fire grew rapidly and now includes the communities of Davenport, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Lompico and Felton, and the people of Zayante Canyon. Authorities have also issued evacuation warnings for downtown Scotts Valley, a mountainous town of about 12,000 residents just north of Santa Cruz along Highway 17.
On Friday night, the tired and short-of-gear crew of the Ben Lomond Volunteer Fire Team were briefed by Cal Fire in the airy, unfinished kitchen of the Mountain Town Fire Hall along the main city intersection.
They were told that the Cal Fire models suggested that in the next 48 to 72 hours, the fire would move through downtown Boulder Creek. If the crews were unable to stop the fire there, Cal Fire would draw reinforcements and allow the fire to descend into the valley – through Brookdale, Ben Lomond and Felton – to Route 17, the high mountain highway. speed that connects San Jose and Santa Cruz.
“No one is going to stop fighting this fire,” said Menlo Park Fire District chief Harold Schapelhouman, who was in Boulder Creek early Saturday morning.
“These guys are going to keep fighting,” he said of the volunteer firefighters. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. They take the blows and get up immediately.
The district of Schapelhouman provides reinforcements. On Friday evening, her crew brought a water dinghy, rig and several water paddles and Gatorade for the exhausted crews.
They were greeted with cheers.
The men and women who fight the fires in the mountains form a crew steeped in history. Most of them work for other cities and municipalities in the Bay Area – such as San Jose, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Redwood City – as full-time firefighters and first responders.
For many, Friday was their day off. But rather than sleep or take shelter, they dragged themselves through the rugged, mountainous terrain to cross borders and put out fires where they could.
“This is my home. These are our neighbors. There’s no way I’m not fighting here,” said Todd Ellis, captain of the Ben Lomond Volunteer Fire District, referring to the informal designations that Cal Fire uses to describe fire fighting areas.
Devastated by Cal Fire’s briefing, he said nothing would stop him from fighting for his city.
Carl Kustin, a volunteer with the Boulder Creek Fire District, agreed.
“We’re not doing this for money. We do this because we love our neighbors. We love our crews. And for us, there is nothing more inspiring than helping others and using all we have to support people and communities, ”he said.
Kustin is a legend among the fire departments of these mountain towns. He and Schapelhouman were responders during the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, among other major disasters in the United States.
Most of the firefighters have been deployed across the country as first responders.
Cal Fire Incident Commander Sean Kavanaugh said the large number of fires statewide meant the fire zone in Sonoma, Lake, Napa, Solano and Yolo counties did not have received the labor it would normally have.
“We’re used to a lot of resources, and that’s not where we are today,” he said. “With the number of large fires that we have all over Northern California, we are only a small part of the big picture.”
The LNU Lightning Complex fire blackened a total of 314,207 acres, destroyed 560 structures and triggered the evacuation of non-essential personnel from Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and patients at Adventist Health St. Helena in Napa County. Four civilians died.
There were around 1,429 personnel fighting the blaze on Saturday, which Kavanaugh contrasted with the 2018 Mendocino Complex fire, which drew around 5,000 people, and the Wine Country fires of 2017, in which nearly 6,000 firefighters were affected.
Still, the blaze remains the state’s top priority for resources as they become available, Cal Fire Unit Chief Shana Jones said on Saturday.
“In an incident of this magnitude and complexity, and with all the firefighting activity statewide, all of our resources remain stretched to a capacity that we did not see in the recent history, ”she said.
On the edge is San jose, the SCU Lightning Complex fire burned 291,968 acres in several locations generally east of Silicon Valley and East Bay and west of the Central Valley.
The blaze started with 20 separate flames, but merged into three, which burned mostly through grass and ranches. Around 6,000 people were ordered to evacuate and around 20,000 structures were threatened.
Authorities feared an early change in the weather on Sunday morning could lead to more rapid growth in fires. Meteorologists predicted that by 5 a.m. winds would pick up, humidities would drop and drier lightning could strike, said Josh Rubinstein, public information manager for Cal Fire.
“These three things help drive or change the behavior of fire,” Rubinstein said. “So the message to the teams working there at this time is to have a heightened sense of awareness.”
Like other fire officials, those handling the incident were also grappling with exhausted staff and equipment, he said.
“No fire has the resources they would like to have right now,” he said. “This fire here, we would probably have 25 helicopters, and we have five. Because there are other areas that need it more desperately than we do. “
He said the state would continue to assign planes and crews to areas where the fires posed the greatest risk to life.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint – and not just on this fire, but on some of the surrounding fires we are facing,” he said.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office also issued an evacuation warning Thursday afternoon covering areas by Philbrook Reservoir and Inskip. The county is grappling with its own Butte Lightning Complex fire, a collection of 34 confirmed lightning-caused fires that have burned a total of 2,623 acres.
It also burns in California the fire of the river, which consumed more than 44,000 acres in rugged mountainous terrain south of Salinas in Monterey County, destroying 16 structures, damaging eight others and forcing compulsory evacuations, according to Cal Fire.
At least 3,000 structures remain threatened by the fire, which was 12% contained on Saturday morning.
The burning of Carmel, burning just southwest of the river blaze, charred more than 5,523 acres and destroyed 32 structures, fire officials said.
In Marin County, the Woodward fire burned 2,259 acres in the Point Reyes National Seashore and was 5% contained by Saturday morning. Two firefighters from the County Fire Department were rescued by helicopter after flames trapped them on a ridge line Friday night.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, which posted a video of the dramatic nighttime rescue online, said firefighters were about 75 meters from the advancing flames, which were creating their own strong, gusty winds that s ‘intensified as the helicopter approached the fire.
A tactical officer was able to tie the two firefighters to a 100-foot line following the helicopter, which airlifted the three firefighters. “Sometimes even first responders need a first responder,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.
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