Summary
Thanks for following the live coverage today. We’re closing the blog for now – here are some key updates and links from the day:
- The wildfires have killed at least six people and forced tens of thousands from their homes.
- Across the state, more than 771,000 acres, an area greater than the state of Rhode Island, have burned.
- Fires have scorched iconic redwoods within Big Basin, California’s oldest state park.
- Governor Gavin Newsom said he was working with the states of Arizona and Oregon on mutual aid and had been in contact with officials in Canada.
- There is a risk of another possible widespread dry lightning event this weekend.
- California’s raging wildfires have created a crisis at multiple state prisons, where there are reports of heavy smoke and ash making it hard to breathe, unanswered pleas for evacuation, and concerns that the fire response could lead to further Covid-19 spread.
- Wildfire smoke has created widespread pollution across the western US.
- Health officials are worried that the smoke is leaving those with respiratory conditions – who are already especially prone to complications from Covid-19 – doubly vulnerable.
- California isn’t the only state on fire right now – there are currently large fires that have burned nearly 1.2m acres across 14 states.
- Nearly 12,000 firefighters have joined efforts across the state, as have more than 1,000 fire engineers.
- Students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz were ordered to evacuate late Thursday night due to the raging fires in the region, a rare order for a major university campus in the state.
- California secured federal assistance to support the response to the fires in Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties.
Updated
As more than 550 wildfires rip through California communities, forcing residents to flee their homes and leave behind treasured possessions, there are also an untold number of animal casualties.
A heartbreaking video out of Solano county, where the LNU Lightning Complex fire has already scorched more than 219,000 acres and destroyed 480 structures, captures the emotional moment when a local rancher and dog trainer searched for her animals amid burned ruins.
“Oh no, Oh no,” rancher Christa Patrillo Haefner says repeatedly as she searches in vain for the dozens of horses and baby goats lost to the inferno. Several horses, which were at a friends house, as well as some goats and pigs somehow survived the blaze — but most of her possessions, on which her livelihood depends, did not.
“We were just starting to recover from a house fire where we lost all of our personal belongings in 2018,” Patrillo Haefner told Good Day Sacramento, noting that she has lived through 14 fires in recent years. “Now we lost everything again.”
Each year, encroaching wildfires set off a scramble as animal owners hustle to rescue pets and livestock. Some animals find ways to save themselves by venturing into safe zones.
Others are rescued thanks to the help of good samaritans, like Ben Samrick, a Davis man who’s already rescued 30 horses by loading them in trailers and moving them to safer ground, like the an evacuation center for large animals that rescue workers have opened at the Solano county fairgrounds in Vallejo, which by Wednesday was home to 60 horses, cows, goats, chickens and emus.
At Paula Nichol’s home on Pleasants Valley Road where her sister and dad brought a horse trailer to move horses Sunny and Cash away from the fire. pic.twitter.com/DwjipZKzL6
— Eric Thomas (@ericthomaskgo) August 19, 2020
Samirick told local ABC10 that animal owners need to prepare for evacuation by having enough equipment, halters and trailers available when time comes to leave.
Veterinarians at UC Davis have been able to treat a total of 13 animals injured by the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, including Ava, an 11-year-old draft horse – the sole survivor among six horses belonging to a nurse who lost her home, truck and trailer in the fire – as well as a Welsh pony named Puzzler and an alpaca dubbed Canelo.
The @ucdavisvetmed team is treating 4 animals injured in the #LNULightingComplex fires — including this alpaca, they’ve dubbed Canelo.
— Liz Kreutz (@ABCLiz) August 20, 2020
They say Canelo was brought in by good samaritans who loaded him in their truck and brought him to the hospital. pic.twitter.com/m92S59WYKz
But animals aren’t just victims to fires — they can also help prevent them. Last year, a heroic herd of 500 goats was credited with saving the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, outside of Los Angeles, who diligently ate their way through 13 acres of scrubland surrounding the library that would have fueled the fire that threatened the structure. One small town northeast of Sacramento last year launched a “goat fund me” to recruit a herd of horned heroes to stave off future wildfires.
– Mario Koran
Updated
Fires burning across western US
California isn’t the only state on fire right now – there are currently large fires that have burned nearly 1.2m acres across 14 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center:
#NationalFireNews: Currently, 92 large fires have burned nearly 1.2 million acres in 14 states. About 25,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to incidents. Evacuation orders are in place for residents near wildfires in AZ, CA, CO, and OR. #FireYear2020 pic.twitter.com/9eZHlOAZbr
— National Interagency Fire Center (@NIFC_Fire) August 21, 2020
The center estimated earlier today that there are 92 large fires and roughly 25,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel responding to the disasters. In addition to California, there are evacuation orders in place in Arizona, Colorado and Oregon.
– Sam Levin
Updated
Officials in Sonoma county, which has been badly damaged by this week’s fires, have reported that the federal wireless emergency alert service it uses is “no longer functioning”.
The local Press Democrat reported that Chris Godley, the county’s emergency management director, told the board this alert service hasn’t been working as it is intended, including sending alerts to much wider areas than officials were targeting. It is supposed to send updates to phones in a specific area. One alert sent this morning linked to information from the Kincade fire last year, which also caused widespread confusion, he told the board of supervisors.
Other alert services, such as Nixle, are working correctly, the newspaper reported.
At its meeting this afternoon, the board also adopted an emergency proclamation, which will allow the region to receive more mutual aid and state funding.
– Sam Levin
Nearly 12,000 firefighters have joined efforts across the state, as have more than 1,000 fire engineers.
California’s firefighting personnel are “on the scale of a small nation’s army”, climate scientist Daniel Swain recently told the Guardian. But the fires currently ripping through the state are so widespread, that crews have been stretched.
During previous, massive fires – crews from all over the state could rush to the region worst affected. Right now, there’s too much going on – and Governor Gavin Newsom has called on the entire country to send help.
State, federal, local, and military resources are on the front lines aggressively battling the dynamic wildfires across California. As they continue their efforts, you can do your part to plan, prepare, and stay aware. Learn more at https://t.co/sWZPp02O9t. pic.twitter.com/OattIdjyAl
— CAL FIRE (@CAL_FIRE) August 21, 2020
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
Wildfire smoke and Covid-19: What you need to know
The coronavirus pandemic has complicated California’s wildfire response in many ways, layering crisis upon crisis. Health officials are worried that the smoke is leaving those with respiratory conditions – who are already especially prone to complications from Covid-19 – doubly vulnerable.
There’s growing evidence that air pollution could exacerbate the severity of illness in coronavirus patients. Smoke also triggers coughing and sneezing, propelling farther the respiratory droplets that spread the coronavirus.
Above all, the fires threaten to put even more pressure on already strained public health resources – with the threat of fire pulling hospitals and health centers out of service amid a health crisis that has already overwhelmed medical providers in some rural counties.
Earlier this year, I took stock of the many ways in which the intersecting threats of fires and disease has put Californians in a precarious spot:
– Maanvi Singh
Updated
The wildfires in California have caused major crises at multiple prisons in the state, where incarcerated people have been struggling for months as Covid spreads behind bars and forces lockdowns. Some details from our recent coverage:
- Dozens of people who had been moved to outdoor tents due to Covid and distancing attempts in overcrowded prisons are now returning to indoor cells due to nearby fires, smoke, ash and pollution.
- Two prisons were directly located in an evacuation zone in Vacaville, but were not evacuated. Prison officials say there is no current threat and that they are closely monitoring.
- One impacted prison that was within the evacuation zone functions as a hospital and houses terminally ill people in hospice care and the elderly and medically vulnerable.
- There are growing concerns that the wildfire response could lead to further Covid infections, especially if people are being moved back indoors or in the case of an evacuation.
A thread with more detail here:
It can be hard to grasp just how terrifying and brutal the wildfire + Covid crisis is for incarcerated people in California right now. Here's a short thread on what I heard from families and folks directly impacted by both catastrophes:https://t.co/XKjZbooUwm
— Sam Levin (@SamTLevin) August 21, 2020
To put the current situation into perspective: 771,000 acres have burned in the past week.
By comparison last year, a total of about 259,823 acres burned all year. That was a relatively mild fire year - these recent fires have yet to surpass the totals from 2018 and 2017, which saw some of the deadliest, most destructive fire seasons on record.
In 2018, a total of 1,963,101 acres burned and in 2017, 1,548,429 acres burned.
In 2016, 669,534 acres burned.
But peak fire season in California is in the autumn when the powerful Santa Ana winds in the south and the Diablo winds in the north tend to rapidly, and some times catastrophically stoke and spread embers into infernos.
Even relative to recent California firestorms, this is hard to process. And there's there's no real end in sight. Autumn offshore wind season--the period of peak fire risk in coastal California--is yet to come. And, of course, we are still in the middle of a respiratory pandemic.
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) August 21, 2020
– Maanvi Singh
A heartening update: In the city of Vacaville, which was subject to the brunt of a large grouping of fires known as the LNU lightening Complex, evacuation orders have now been lifted:
Update 1:05pm – We are happy to report ALL evacuation orders for the city of Vacaville now been lifted. This means there are no active evacuation orders within the Vacaville city limits and all residents are clear to return to their homes.
— Vacaville Police (@VacavillePolice) August 21, 2020
– Maanvi Singh
Wildfire smoke creating widespread pollution across western US
The National Weather Service has noted that the smoke from California’s fires has moved into Nebraska today:
GeoColor satellite imagery from @CIRA_CSU shows smoke from wildfires in California moving into Nebraska this morning. #NEwx pic.twitter.com/I5EHIfTGBq
— NWS North Platte (@NWSNorthPlatte) August 21, 2020
The rising smoke is visible in satellites in Utah:
Latest forecast simulation of smoke through this evening, not expecting much improvement over northern and western Utah. #utwx pic.twitter.com/SmmTzcqcm8
— NWS Salt Lake City (@NWSSaltLakeCity) August 21, 2020
The smoke and air pollution is particularly severe in some parts of the Bay Area right now, raising concerns about how the fires could potentially create problems for the Covid-19 crisis. Dr Stephanie Christenson, a University of California, San Francisco professor of medicine, noted in a news conference yesterday that the smoke could result in longer recovery time and possibly re-hospitalization among patients recovering from Covid, the New York Times reported.
Christenson cautioned that it was too early to say with certainty how the smoke from wildfires could hamper Covid efforts, but noted that air pollution does inflame the lungs.
Fact checking Trump's California wildfire remarks
At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Trump resurfaced a familiar broadside that California’s wildfires are of the state’s own making because the state has failed to take his advice to “clean” its forest floors of debris.
“They’re starting again in California,” Trump said of the wildfires raging across the state.
“I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up,” he said. “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” he added.
The argument dates back to 2018, when Trump visited the area burned by the Camp Fire, which killed 84 people in the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history. He said at the time that Finland’s “forest cities” have been able to avoid fires because they’ve spent “a lot of time raking” their forest floors.
There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018
But the criticism conveniently overlooks the fact that the federal government controls most of the state’s forestland and that state and local agencies oversee just 3%. Forestry experts have disputed the president’s assertion, pointing out that the state’s most destructive recent fires have occurred in grasslands and oak-studded hillsides, San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Development that has encroached on fire-prone areas has also played a role, as has climate change, which has meant prolonged periods of drought that’s turned wildlands into kindling.
While Trump’s threats to withhold federal aid from California are familiar, so far they’ve proven empty.
Last year, when the president leveled the same criticism at the Golden State, Governor Newsom clapped back pointedly, “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.”
You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation. https://t.co/PSt8N39Er5
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 3, 2019
Newsom also noted today that he had formed a new partnership with the federal government to work together on forest management – noting that the president might not have been aware of this arrangement when he made his remarks this week.
Updated
A few more updates from Governor Newsom’s press conference, which just ended:
- He spoke again about the climate crisis and noted that the blackouts won’t stand in the way of the state’s sustainability efforts, saying, “The last thing we need to do is double down on a future that created the conditions we’re trying to address here today.” He pledged to “radically change the way we produce and consume energy”.
- The governor said the state had prepared for the shortage of firefighters due to a decline in available crews of incarcerated firefighters, which the state has long relied on (despite widespread concerns about the ethics and labor issues surrounding use of imprisoned workers). He said the state had brought on more than 830 firefighters to backfill those positions after some incarcerated firefighters were released from prison due to the Covid crisis. (The state does not allow incarcerated firefighters to continue this work after their release.)
- Newsom said mutual aid support was coming from Arizona, Oregon, Washington state, Texas, Nevada and elsewhere.
- Regarding Trump’s attacks on California, Newsom said, “He may make statements publicly, but the working relationship privately has been an effective one.”
Updated
Gavin Newsom on 560 fires: 'We are struggling'
Governor Gavin Newsom is giving an update on the fires now, noting that the state is stretched thin while dealing with this “unprecedented moment” in California history.
He said it was a challenge to respond to the 560 active fires still raging, which includes two dozen complex, major fires: “We are struggling.”
The governor also noted that the state has been suffering from what may be the “hottest modern recorded temperatures in the history of the world”, adding, “That is a remarkable statement of fact.”
The extreme heat wave has dramatically affected the entire region beyond California, he added: “The heat dome we experienced … has impacted the entire western United States. Fire conditions have increased in other states ... Our mutual aid that goes outside of the state of California has also been stretched.” Newsom said he was working with the states of Arizona and Oregon on mutual aid and had been in contact with officials in Canada.
He specifically thanked the Trump administration for the Fema grants, a remark that came one day after the president, speaking at a campaign event, threatened to withhold funds to California. Countering the president’s partisan attacks, Newsom has tried to emphasize the bipartisan efforts to respond to the fires, including partnering with Republican governors.
The key statistics:
CA FIRES UPDATE:
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 21, 2020
- More than 12,000 lightning strikes
- 560 fires since this began
- 18 new fires since yesterday
- 20 major fires
- 771K acres burned (that’s about the size of Rhode Island)
Grateful for our firefighters and first responders on the frontlines keeping CA safe.
More than 771,000 acres burned, greater than state of Rhode Island
Cal Fire is now giving an update on the state of the fires, with some extraordinary statistics, including that more than 771,000 acres have burned so far, an area greater than the state of Rhode Island.
Additionally, there have been 12,000 lightning strikes and 560 new wildfires.
Possible lightning event this weekend in Bay Area
An alarming forecast from the National Weather Service in the Bay Area: there is a risk of another possible widespread dry lightning event this weekend. Daniel Swain, a leading climate scientist and expert on the subject, summarized that this could begin as early as tomorrow or late Monday.
Once again copy/pasting @NWSBayArea forecast discussion on dry lightning potential for this weekend. TL;DR: risk of another fairly widespread elevated convection/dry lightning event this weekend is growing (perhaps as early as tomorrow or as late as Monday). #CAwx #CAfire pic.twitter.com/z5YhpSS6O4
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) August 21, 2020
It could affect a wide area of northern California.
Fire in Point Reyes grows to 2,100 acres
The Woodward fire has grown to 2,100 acres at the Point Reyes national seashore, one of California’s most beloved national parks, just north of San Francisco.
The fire was spreading in a remote area of Point Reyes in Marin county, and the popular trails in the area have been closed. The blaze is contributing to the heavy smoke and poor air quality in the region, including in San Francisco. The blaze has threatened more than 1,600 homes and businesses, and evacuation warnings remained in place for nearby towns.
This fire also started with lightning strikes, and fire officials said this morning they were in the process of slowing its spread through aerial strikes.
Update on the #woodwardfire
— Marin County Fire (@marincountyfire) August 21, 2020
2,000 acres, 0% containment. Aerial resources still onscene. Heavy smoke impacting Marin County. pic.twitter.com/Vlse1EYybU
Fire devastation, by the numbers
As of this morning, here’s a recap of some of the devastation across the state so far:
- The fires have killed at least five people so far, including three people found in a house in Napa county, a fourth person in Solano county and a PG&E utility worker who died while clearing infrastructure.
- At least 33 people have suffered injuries across the fires.
- More than 500 structures have been destroyed.
- More than 60,000 people have been ordered to evacuate.
- The fires have burned across more than 500,000 acres.
- More than 10,000 lighting strikes over several days caused hundreds of fires, including a dozen significant ones.
- More than 10,000 firefighters are working on the frontlines, but authorities say they are stretched thin.
- More than 1,300 incarcerated firefighters are currently battling the blazes.
UC Santa Cruz evacuated
Students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz were ordered to evacuate late Thursday night due to the raging fires in the region, a rare order for a major university campus in the state.
UC Santa Cruz has issued at State of Emergency. All on-campus residents must evacuate now and be prepared to not return for at least two weeks. The evacuation center for UCSC is in Coconut Grove at the Boardwalk. Get more info: https://t.co/Fir6Rth3qX pic.twitter.com/0jh5TPWaJy
— UC Santa Cruz (@ucsc) August 21, 2020
The university said it was working with local hotels to find rooms for fleeing students, though it was unclear how many were currently on campus, according to the LA Times. The campus currently has 18,000 enrolled but many are not on campus due to Covid.
The fire threatening the Santa Cruz area, which is south of Silicon Valley, is called the CZU August Lightning Complex fire and as of this morning had spread to more than 229,000 acres, threatening 20,000 structures and forcing evacuations of roughly 64,000 people, the Times noted. It has also destroyed historic structures in a nearby redwoods state park.
Last night, students and others in the area were evacuating to the Santa Cruz boardwalk.
California secures additional Fema grants
Hi all - Sam Levin in Los Angeles here, taking over our live coverage as massive blazes continue to burn across the state.
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has just announced that the state has secured federal assistance to support the response to the fires in Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) grant is provided through the president’s disaster relief fund. It will go toward the SCU Lightning Complex fire, the name authorities have given to 20 separate fires burning across three different zones in a range of northern California counties.
This fire has burned roughly 229,968 acres and threatened thousands of homes as of this morning. The state has secured Fema grants for Santa Cruz, San Mateo, Napa, Nevada, Lake, Solano, Yolo and Monterey counties.
Newsom’s announcement this morning comes one day after Trump made baseless comments attacking California’s response and issuing vague threats to withhold money, following his pattern of threatening blue to deny aid to blue states amid disasters. “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” the president said at a rally.
Updated
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, in their joint op ed about the current wildfires in California:
There’s an idea that when the climate crisis begins, we will know it. Movies present it as a moment when the world’s weather suddenly turns apocalyptic: winds howl, sea levels surge, capital cities are decimated. Climate messaging can bolster this notion, implying that we have a certain number of years to save the day before reaching a cataclysmic point of no return.
Living in expectation of a definitive global break can blind us to the fact that gradually, insidiously, the climate crisis has already arrived.
In few places is this as clear as California, where extreme wildfires have become the new abnormal. There is currently a “fire siege” in northern California, with wildfires burning in every one of the nine Bay Area counties except for San Francisco, which is entirely urbanized. Tens of thousands of residents have evacuated and people are choking on smoke.
Here it is in full.
Dani and Alastair are the co-authors of a book on one particular California wildfire, the Paradise blaze of 2018. Here’s an extract:
Here’s a look at some website headlines – and links to local reporting – from around California…
San Francisco Chronicle: CZU August Lightning Complex fires force 64,600 to evacuate San Mateo, Santa Cruz counties
Sacramento Bee: Deadly LNU fire in North Bay already one of California’s largest ever
Fresno Bee: How do you keep wildfire smoke out of your house and car? Here are some tips
LA Times: It’s déjà vu in the Bay Area as fires again force evacuations and cloud the skies
Updated
Sticking with the Associated Press, it has spoken to some residents affected by the fires:
Smoke and ash billowing from the fires have fouled the air throughout California’s scenic central coast and in San Francisco. The fires have destroyed at least 175 buildings, including homes, and threatened tens of thousands more.
Tim and Anne Roberts had gone to the beach with their two children on Monday, in order to avoid the smoke at their home in Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz county. They packed a change of clothes, their children’s school supplies and their passports, just in case.
They learned on Wednesday that their house had burned. Birth certificates, legal documents and family heirlooms were gone. From photos of the ruins, they were surprised by how many redwoods, oaks and fruit trees were still standing.
Its a strange sort of comfort, Tim Roberts said.
The good news for Brookdale resident Larissa Eisenstein was that her five chickens, Kelly and the Nuggets, had been safely relocated into a stranger’s yard in a neighboring community.
The chicken evacuation came a day after Eisenstein, a Silicon Valley tech worker, was forced to leave them behind during an overnight evacuation. She fled with her cats Mochi and Mini, driving from one hotel to the next only to find they were full before landing in a safe place for some rest.
The bad news was that the fire was burning down her wooded street. She adjusted to the idea that her worldly possessions may now be limited to photos of her parents, some jewelry and fresh tomatoes from her garden.
“After I got the cats, I realized there was very little important to me, and the priority is to try to remember how lovely things can be,” she said. “I’ve had a wonderful garden this year.”
More on the death toll too, from the Associated Press:
The death toll already had reached at least five.
Daniel Berlant, an assistant deputy director with the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire, said three civilians died in Napa county and one died in neighboring Solano county since the fires began. Solano county sheriff Thomas A Ferrara reported the death of a male resident there.
It wasnt immediately clear whether the fatalities included a Pacific Gas & Electric utility worker who was found dead on Wednesday in a vehicle in the Vacaville area.
Also, in central California, a pilot on a water-dropping mission in western Fresno county died on Wednesday morning when his helicopter crashed.
At least two other people were missing and more than 30 civilians and firefighters have been injured, authorities said.
Updated
The Associated Press has an update on weather conditions in California that might affect the spread of the fires, and efforts to fight them, today:
Although temperatures were predicted to ease slightly on Friday, they were also expected to be hot enough so that firefighters will not be able to count on cool evening weather aiding them. Erratic winds also could drive the fires unpredictably in multiple directions, state fire officials said.
“There’s so much heat in these fires that they create their own wind ... and they may blow in any direction, and very erratically,” said Daniel Berlant, an assistant deputy director with the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire.
Winds gusting to 20mph over ridge tops could challenge the overnight firefighting efforts in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, said the incident commander, Cal Fire Assistant Chief Billy See.
“This country likes to burn at night, more so than during the day, and that’s because of the wind patterns,” he said.
Nearly 50,000 people were ordered evacuated in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties.
Updated
Prisons overwhelmed by Covid face approaching fires
California’s raging wildfires have created a crisis at multiple state prisons, where there are reports of heavy smoke and ash making it hard to breathe, unanswered pleas for evacuation and concerns that the fire response could lead to further Covid-19 spread.
A massive fire in the Vacaville area, north of San Francisco, has rapidly spread within miles of two state prisons, including one that holds terminally ill people, the elderly and the medically vulnerable.
Despite mass evacuation orders in surrounding areas authorities have resisted calls to evacuate the two prisons: California Medical Facility (CMF) and Solano state prison. In Los Angeles, a separate fire has grown near the Lancaster state prison, which has also suffered a significant Covid outbreak.
“They are breathing in fire and smoke, and they have nowhere to run,” said Sophia Murillo, 39, whose brother is incarcerated at CMF in Vacaville. “Everyone has evacuated but they were left there in prison. Are they going to wait until the last minute to get them out?”
More from Reuters, about the human cost of the fires:
A utility crewman died on Wednesday while on duty helping clear electrical hazards for first responders. Earlier, the pilot of a firefighting helicopter contracted by the state was killed in a crash during a water-dropping mission in Fresno county.
CalFire officials late on Thursday reported four civilian fatalities in the same fire zone, dubbed the LNU Complex, where the utility worker died, though no details on the circumstances of their deaths were immediately available.
Plumes of smoke and ash fouled air quality for hundreds of miles around fire zones, adding to the misery and health risks of residents forced to flee or those stuck inside sweltering homes that lacked air conditioning.
Medical experts warned that the coronavirus pandemic has considerably heightened the health hazards posed by smoky air and extreme heat, especially for older adults and those already suffering from respiratory illnesses.
“Everything is gone,” resident Nick Pike told CapRadio in Sacramento, the state capital, after he and three neighbors lost their homes near the town of Vacaville, about 55 miles north-east of San Francisco.
More further reading from the Guardian follows – an op ed by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, co-authors of Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, available from WW Norton. You can read an excerpt here.
Alastair and Dani consider what the current fires tell us about the climate crisis. As Reuters puts it, “the fires raged amid a record-breaking heat wave that has baked California since last Friday, resulting from a dome of atmospheric high pressure hovering over the American south-west.”
Updated
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of wildfires in California which have displaced tens of thousands of people, in the midst of a heatwave and, lest anyone forget, a pandemic that has killed more than 170,000 people in America, 11,600 of them in the golden state.
Reuters reports this morning that at least six people have died, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
With firefighting forces badly depleted from the heaviest spate of incendiary lightning strikes to rake California in more than a decade, some ground crews labored through grueling 72-hour shifts, despite efforts to muster reinforcements from out of state.
“With no reserves coming, they just do what they’ve got to do,” CalFire spokesman Scott Ross said, referring to firefighting teams that normally work 24-hour shifts. “We’re stretched very thin.”
An estimated 11,000 lightning strikes, mostly in northern and central California, ignited more than 370 individual fires, spawning nearly two dozen major conflagrations that threatened thousands of homes and prompted mass evacuations.
…as of Thursday night, the biggest fires statewide had collectively scorched more than 630,000 acres, or 980-plus square miles, an area twice as large as the entire land mass of sprawling Los Angeles. Hundreds of homes and other buildings were left in ruins.
Sam Levin will be here soon to take the blog on. The Guardian’s latest report, from Maanvi Singh and Vivian Ho, is here:
