Record-Setting Blazes Continue To Rip Through Northern California

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Updated at 8:01 p.m. ET

California Gov. Gavin Newsom offered a litany of devastating statistics Monday afternoon as hundreds of thousands of acres continue to burn across California in some of the largest wildfires in state history.

“Foundationally and fundamentally we’re at a point [where] every resource at our disposal, every resource that we have within the state, is being used” to battle the historic wildfires, Newsom said, his voice weary during a daily news conference.

More fires with more devastating effects

Newsom stressed the disastrous and historic scale of this year’s fires so early in the season.

He noted that exactly a year ago, about 56,000 acres had been burned by 4,292 wildfires in the state. “To date over 7,002 wildfires [have burned] more than 1.4 million acres,” he said. That’s an area more than three times bigger than the city of Los Angeles, and more than six and a half times the size of Chicago.

At the moment, California is battling roughly 625 concurrent wildfires across the state, including a number of new fires that appeared overnight.

In the last 24 hours, close to 300 lightning strikes have hit the northern California region and 10 new fires have been ignited. However, officials suspect there are several individual “sleeper fires” that have yet to be discovered due to the inaccessible nature of the terrain, the governor said.

More than 1,200 structures have been destroyed, though Newsom noted, “there is no question there are more structures that have been damaged.”

Meanwhile, the crushing heat continues to pose severe challenges to firefighters, especially in the eastern part of the state. And the northern part of the state is bracing for high winds with lightning that threaten to spark new blazes.

On all sides of the San Francisco Bay Area, the three largest blazes — caused by clusters of wildfires — are burrowing through forest and rural areas mostly uncontained, officials said.

Part of the reason for that, Newsom told reporters, is that in many cases the fires are tearing through regions that have not seen any fire activity in more than a hundred years. That is the case in the coastal mountain areas around Santa Cruz, where flames are engulfing sky-scraping redwood trees.

The governor called it proof that “we are in a different climate and we are dealing with different climate conditions that are precipitating the fires, the likes of which we haven’t seen in modern recorded history.”

Scorching heat and lighting offer little reprieve

Most of Northern California remains under a “red flag warning” through Tuesday morning. The National Weather Service is calling for high temperatures, low humidity and “erratic” wind gusts of up to 40 to 50 mph that could blow around existing fires.

Residual moisture from tropical storms in the Gulf is expected to collide with scorching temperatures in California, creating the potential for dry lightning strikes that could spark new blazes, Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant said in an update posted on Facebook.

Over the past week, more than 13,000 dry lightning strikes sparked more than 600 fires that were elevated by dry conditions in a parched California terrain. These fires have put more than 250,000 people under evacuation orders and warnings.

At least seven people have died as of this weekend when authorities discovered the body of a 70-year-old man in the remote Santa Cruz mountains area known as Last Chance.

Firefighters struggle to extinguish massive complex fires

That fire, known as the CZU August Lightning Complex, is scorching some 78,000 acres across San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties and has destroyed at least 231 structures. As of Monday afternoon, Cal Fire officials said the blaze is only 13% contained.

Complex fires consist of several separate fires spread across a specific geographic region.

The largest of the three fire complexes, the LNU Lightning Complex, is covering more than 350,000 acres near the Napa Valley, making it the second-largest fire in state history. It has killed at least four people and destroyed 871 structures.

With only 22% of the blaze contained, Cal Fire officials are expecting the LNU Lightning Complex to spread as “fires continue to make runs in multiple directions, impacting multiple communities,” according to a statement Monday morning.

In Santa Clara and Alameda counties, another series of fires that make up the SCU Lightning Complex has grown to more than 347,000 acres, Cal Fire reports. That fire is only 10% contained.

Progress is made in Southern California

In Southern California, firefighters battling rough terrain, hot weather and potential thunderstorms kept an 11-day-old blaze steady at just under 50 square miles near Lake Hughes in the Los Angeles County mountains. Over the weekend, crews made significant progress combating the flames and have managed to contain 62% of the fire, Newsom reported.

California’s full bevy of resources have been deployed

The governor on Monday reiterated that the state is tapped out on the resources available to put an end to the infernos.

More than 14,000 firefighting personnel from across the state are working to extinguish the flames, Newsom said. While a substantial number of out-of-state crews have already joined the ranks of in-state firefighters, even more are expected to arrive from Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, Utah and Washington, as well as some National Guard troops from Kansas.

The governor has also requested an additional 375 engines to bolster those already on the ground.

Evacuees contend with a new set of challenges

As the fires force more residents to flee, some evacuated homes have been burglarized. At least 13 people have been arrested on suspicion of looting or planning to loot in Santa Cruz County, officials said.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also complicating evacuation orders as officials scramble to find space for residents who were forced from their homes. As NPR’s Lauren Sommer reports for our Newscast unit, many evacuees are being sent to hotels to allow for social distancing in shelters.

More than 2,200 people have been evacuated as of Monday morning, the governor said. Of those, nearly 1,500 have been housed in hotels.

Others are struggling to find shelter after being financially devastated by the pandemic. Earlier this week, Tina Marie Carini, her husband and two sons had to flee from their trailer in North Santa Cruz County.

Both she and her husband are out of work and concerned about recovering financially now that the wildfires have struck their neighborhood, Carini told KQED’s Hannah Hagemann. The family has had to move locations three times in the past week.

“We’re just hoping we don’t lose everything, and we’re tired of running,” Carini says. “We’re just so tired.”