Bad weather could spark more wildfires in California
Firefighters are for nearly a week battling three huge complexes of fires that destroyed hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to flee.
A firefighter for the Boulder Creek Fire Department, gets down from a fire truck, August 22, 2020, in Boulder Creek, California.
An unwelcome change in the weather, with higher winds, temperatures and lightning is threatening to spark new wildfires in Northern California.
Firefighters are for nearly a week battling three huge complexes of fires that destroyed hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to flee.
Firefighters are making slow but hopeful progress in battling the blazes, aided by good weather, but hampered by smoky skies that grounded water-dropping aircraft for some of the day.
Reinforcements arrived to bolster overwhelmed crews, and evacuation orders were lifted in some areas.
But the changing weather brings fears of new fires and warnings from state and local officials for residents in threatened areas to prepare to flee at any moment.
“There's not a feeling of pure optimism, but a feeling of resolve, a feeling of we have resources backing us up,” Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore said.
Since August 15, state fire officials say more than 12,000 lightning strikes across the state ignited more than 500 wildfires.
Of those, about two dozen major fires are attracting most of the state's resources.
Most of the damage is caused by three clusters of fire complexes that are ravaging forest and rural areas in and around the San Francisco Bay Area.
They've burned through 2,900 square kilometres.
Ben Slaughter, a firefighter for the Boulder Creek Fire Department, walks along Highway 9 while monitoring flames from the CZU August Lightning Complex Fire, Saturday, August 22, 2020,.
Fires killed five people
Among the casualties are ancient redwood trees at California's oldest state park, Big Basin Redwoods, plus the park's headquarters and campgrounds.
Smoke from the fires makes the region's air quality dangerous, forcing people to stay inside.
Overall, the fires killed at least five people, torched nearly 700 homes and other structures and forced tens of thousands from their houses.
“Tuesday night when I went to bed I had a beautiful home on a beautiful ranch,” said 81-year-old Hank Hanson of Vacaville.
“By Wednesday night, I have nothing but a bunch of ashes.”
Changing weather
The changing weather brings good news for some communities, including Boulder Creek, an old logging community of about 5,000 people in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Fire officials expect the blaze to reach the community, but they took advantage of recent good weather to try to “herd” flames around the town.
Storms predicted for Sunday are expected to aid those efforts by changing the direction of the wind.
“As bad as that weather prediction is overall for certain parts of this fire, it actually is going to help us move it away from those certain communities,” said Chief Mark Brunton, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the state's firefighting agency.
READ MORE: California struggles to contain deadly wildfires which have doubled in size
Crews from the Boulder Creek Fire Department keep an eye out on a flare up from the CZU August Lightning Complex Fire along Highway 9, Saturday, August 22, 2020, in Boulder Creek, California.
Major disaster declaration
Responding to the emergency, President Donald Trump on Saturday issued a major disaster declaration to provide federal assistance.
Governor Gavin Newsom says the declaration will also help people in counties affected by the fires with crisis counseling, housing and other social services.
Fire officials, meanwhile, are struggling to get enough resources to fight the two largest cluster of fires around the San Francisco Bay area that had grown to become the second-largest and third-largest fires in state history by size.
The fire burning in California's wine country, north of the San Francisco Bay, has only 1,400 firefighters assigned to battle the blaze.
By comparison, the state has 5,000 firefighters assigned to the Mendocino Complex in 2018, which still holds the record as the largest fire in state history, for now.
“All of our resources remain stretched to capacity that we have not seen in recent history,” said Shana Jones, the chief for CalFire's Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit.
Underscoring the danger the fires pose for firefighters, the Sonoma County sheriff's office released dramatic video of the helicopter rescue Friday night of two firefighters trapped on a ridge line at Point Reyes National Seashore.
They were hoisted to safety as flames advanced.
“Had it not been for that helicopter, those firefighters would certainly have perished,” Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said.
READ MORE: More evacuations ordered as California fires expand
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