BEN LOMOND, Calif. _ More than 1 million acres have burned in California since July, marking a troubling early start to the fire season that has been punctuated by a series of deadly blazes around the Bay Area that have destroyed hundreds of homes and sent tens of thousands fleeing.
Firefighters on Saturday were battling dangerous blazes from the Santa Cruz Mountains to wine country and beyond, using a small break in the weather Saturday amid warnings that more lightning _ which sparked many of the fires _ could return Sunday.
In all, more than 971,000 acres have burned in Northern and Central California _ the equivalent of more than 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" during which 12,000 strikes started 585 new wildland fires, officials said Saturday.
The blazes include the LNU Lightning Complex fire, which at more than 314,000 acres is the second-largest fire in California history. The SCU Lightning Complex fire, currently covering more than 291,000 acres, is third-largest.
The fires, fanned by strong winds, heat and low humidity, have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate.
At least 700 structures have been destroyed, and the fire-fanning weather conditions that have brought record temperatures and thousands of lightning strikes in the past few days are not expected to abate soon. Meanwhile, authorities are reporting depleted resources, with manpower and tools stretched thin by the sheer scale and number of fires across the state.
One of the biggest concerns was the CZU August Lightning Complex fire, which was raging in the remote mountainous area southwest of Silicon Valley, on the border of San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. That fire has burned 63,000 acres and forced the evacuation of at least 77,000 people, officials said Saturday morning. Officials 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 has destroyed 97 structures and threatens more than 24,000 others. It is 5% contained, officials said Saturday morning.
The fire has caused extensive damage at Big Basin Redwoods State Park and forced the evacuation of staff, campers and other visitors. The state park, California's oldest, sustained damage to its headquarters, campgrounds and historic core. Officials with the California Department of Parks and Recreation said the agency did not yet know the number of acres that had burned within the park and were assessing the damage.
The fire was threatening the communities of Pescadero and La Honda in San Mateo County. In Santa Cruz County, structures have been lost in the Swanton Road area, and a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection station was under threat.
The evacuation zone for this fire has expanded rapidly and now includes the communities of Davenport, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Lompico and Felton, and inhabitants of Zayante Canyon. Officials also issued evacuation warnings for downtown Scotts Valley, a mountainous city of about 12,000 people just north of Santa Cruz along Highway 17.
On Friday night, the tired, equipment-strapped crew of Ben Lomond's volunteer firefighting crew were briefed by Cal Fire in the mountain town fire station's airy and unfinished kitchen along the main intersection of town.
They were told that Cal Fire's models suggested in the next 48 to 72 hours, the fire would move into Boulder Creek's downtown. If the crews were unable to stop the fire there, Cal Fire would pull its reinforcements and allow the fire to funnel down the valley _ through Brookdale, Ben Lomond and Felton _ toward Route 17, the high-speed mountain highway that connects San Jose and Santa Cruz.
"No one's going to stop fighting that fire," said Menlo Park Fire Department's chief, Harold Schapelhouman, who was in Boulder Creek in the early morning hours of Saturday.
"These guys are going to keep fighting," he said of the volunteer firefighters. "That's just what they do. They take the knocks and get right back up."
Schapelhouman's district is providing reinforcements. On Friday night, his crew brought up a water tender, rig and several palettes of water and Gatorade for the exhausted crews.
They were greeted with cheers.
The men and women fighting the fires in the mountains are a storied crew. 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 were slogging through the rugged, mountainous terrain clearing boundaries and dousing fires where they could.
"This is my home. These are our neighbors. There's no way I wouldn't be here fighting," said Todd Ellis, captain of Ben Lomond's volunteer fire department, referring to the informal designations Cal Fire uses to describe firefighting zones.
Devastated by Cal Fire's briefing, he said nothing would stop him from fighting for his town.
Carl Kustin, a volunteer with the Boulder Creek fire department agreed.
"We don't do this for money. We do this because we love our neighbors. We love our crews. And for us, there's nothing more inspiring than helping others and using everything 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 at the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, among other major U.S. disasters.
Most of the firefighters have been deployed around the nation as first responders.
Cal Fire Incident Commander Sean Kavanaugh said the sheer number of fires statewide has meant that the fire zone in Sonoma, Lake, Napa, Solano and Yolo counties has not received the manpower it normally would.
"We're used to lots of resources, and that's not where we're at today," he said. "With the amount of large fires that we have throughout the entire Northern California, we're just one small piece of the bigger picture."
The LNU Lightning Complex fire has blackened a combined 314,207 acres, destroyed 560 structures and triggered the evacuation of nonessential personnel from Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and patients from Adventist Health St. Helena hospital in Napa County. Four civilians have died.
There were about 1,429 personnel fighting the fire as of Saturday, which Kavanaugh contrasted with the Mendocino Complex fire in 2018, which drew about 5,000 personnel, and the Wine Country fires of 2017, to which nearly 6,000 firefighters were assigned.
Still, the fire remains the state's top priority for resources as they become available, Shana Jones, Cal Fire unit chief, said Saturday.
"Within an incident of this size and complexity, and with all of the fire activity throughout the state, all of our resources remain stretched to a capacity that we have not seen in recent history," she said.
On the eastern edge of San Jose, the SCU Lightning Complex fire has burned 291,968 acres in multiple locations generally east of Silicon Valley and the East Bay and west of the Central Valley.
The fire started as 20 separate blazes but merged into three, which were mostly burning through grass and ranchlands. About 6,000 people were ordered to evacuate, and roughly 20,000 structures were threatened.
Authorities were concerned a change in the weather early Sunday morning could lead to more rapid fire growth. Meteorologists were predicting that starting about 5 a.m., winds would pick up, humidities would drop and more dry lightning could strike, said Josh Rubinstein, public information officer for Cal Fire.
"Those three things help drive or change fire behavior," Rubinstein said. "So the message to the crews that are working out there at that time is to have a heightened sense of awareness."
Like other fire officials, those managing the incident were also contending with depleted staffing and equipment, he said.
"No fire has the resources that they would like to have right now," he said. "This fire here, we would probably have 25 helicopters on, and we have five. Because there are other areas that need them more desperately than we do."
He said the state would continue to assign aircraft and crews to areas where fire posed the greatest risk to life.
"It's a marathon, not a sprint _ and not on just this fire, but some of the surrounding fires that we're dealing with," he said.
The Butte County Sheriff's Office also issued an evacuation warning Thursday afternoon covering the areas of Philbrook Reservoir and Inskip. The county is contending with its own Butte Lightning Complex fire, a collection of 34 confirmed lightning-caused fires that have burned a combined 2,623 acres.
Also burning in California is the River fire, which has consumed more than 44,000 acres in steep mountainous terrain south of Salinas in Monterey County, destroying 16 structures, damaging eight others and forcing mandatory evacuations, according to Cal Fire.
At least 3,000 structures remain threatened by the blaze, which was 12% contained as of Saturday morning.
The Carmel fire, burning just southwest of the River fire, has charred more than 5,523 acres and destroyed 32 structures, fire officials said.
In Marin County, the Woodward fire had burned 2,259 acres in the Point Reyes National Seashore and was 5% contained as of Saturday morning. Two firefighters with the county fire department were rescued by helicopter after flames trapped them on a ridgeline Friday night.
The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, which posted video of the dramatic nighttime rescue online, said the firefighters were about 75 yards from the advancing flames, which were creating their own strong, gusting winds that intensified as the helicopter neared the blaze.
A tactical officer was able to attach both firefighters to a 100-foot line trailing from the helicopter, which airlifted all three to safety. "Sometimes, even First Responders need a First Responder," the Sheriff's Office wrote on Facebook.
