California: firefighters begin to turn tide but
warn that 'mega-fire era' has arrived
Officials say progress was made against the the LNU
Lightning Complex and the CZU Lightning Complex fires
Maanvi
Singh in Oakland
@maanvissingh
Wed 26 Aug
2020 00.57 BSTFirst published on Tue 25 Aug 2020 13.07 BST
The dry
lightning and winds that forecasters warned could stoke the blazes and spark
more were less severe than expected, allowing crews – aided by reinforcements
from neighboring states – to make progress in containing the fires. The blazes
have killed seven and scorched more than 1,200 homes and other buildings.
“This is
indeed a difficult time in California,” said Mark Ghaly, California’s top
health official. We knew something like this would come,” he added. “But the
reality of it is challenging for so many Californians.”
Ghaly
advised residents to heed evacuation orders, acknowledging: “We’re telling many
folks who haven’t left their homes for months, who are worried about their
exposure to Covid, that it’s safer to leave than to stay.” To those out of the
fires’ immediate path but residing in one of the larges swaths of the state
that remain blanketed in smoke, his message was to remain indoors, as the cloth
face coverings that help prevent the spread of coronavirus do not filter out
toxic air.
Although
fire crews are making progress, many of those displaced by the fires face an
uncertain future. “Overall our hope is to get you back quickly,” said Mark
Essick, the sheriff of Sonoma county, where the LNU Complex fire, the most
deadly of the conflagrations that have overtaken the Bay Area, continues to
burn. Officials are still assessing the damage. “This is a time when some
people will realize that they do not have homes,” Essick said at a press
conference on Tuesday.
Officials
said on Tuesday the LNU Complex fire was 27% contained, having scorched more
than 350,000 acres in California’s wine country.
Crews were
also making some progress against the SCU Complex fire east of the San
Francisco Bay, which, having scorched more than 363,000 acres is the
second-largest wildfire in California history, followed by the LNU, which is
the third-largest. A third major fire, the CZU complex to the south, was also
heeling, thanks to calmer weather and some rain over the weekend, according to
officials.
“We are
essentially living in a mega-fire era,” said Jake Hess, a Cal Fire unit chief,
told reporters on Monday. Large, catastrophic fires “have been outpacing
themselves every year”, he said.
Officials
warned the danger was far from over. Six people who returned to a restricted
area south of San Francisco were surprised by fire and had to be rescued, the
San Mateo sheriff said. Looters have been warned they will be arrested and some
people have been taken into custody, including a man found with $5,000 in his
car, authorities said.
Evacuees
tempted to check on their homes should think again, officials said.
“It is
highly dangerous in there still,” Jonathan Cox, a Cal Fire deputy chief, of the
blaze north of Santa Cruz. “We have bridges that have failed, old wooden
bridges that have failed that may not appear failed to people, that they may
drive on. It is not safe.”
An
estimated 170,000 are under evacuation orders and tens of thousands of homes
remain under threat. Some orders were reduced to warnings on Monday.
Elinor
Slayer fled her home in the redwood-dotted mountain town of Boulder Creek,
north of Santa Cruz, on Tuesday evening, along with her four children, when
they started seeing burnt leaves and large pieces of ash.
“Luckily
for me, I have a 13-year-old daughter who is very cautious about wildfires. We
had bags packed already,” said Slayer, 48. “We hadn’t gotten an evacuation
order yet but my daughter said, ‘It’s time to go.’”
The family
is counting their blessings that everyone is safe and hoping their home is too.
“We don’t know what we’re going to return to,” Slayer said.
The fires
are blamed for at least seven deaths, among them 70-year-old Mary Hintemeyer,
her boyfriend, Leo McDermott, and his son, Tom, said Hintemeyer’s son, Robert
McNeal, of Winters, California.
McNeal told
KPIX-TV he had lost contact with his mother last Tuesday night as the fires
sped up. He said his mother had tried to go into town earlier that day but
turned back at a roadblock where authorities said if she went through she
wouldn’t be allowed back. She returned to get her boyfriend, who was in a wheelchair.
Authorities
found their remains among the ruins on the Napa county property, he said.
“Just get
out, don’t wait,” McNeal said. “If you think it’s going to be too much to get
your sprinklers on before you get out of there, forget those too. Forget it.
Get out. Just get out. It ain’t worth it.”
The huge,
simultaneous wildfires advancing across the state, many of which were spawned
by a rare bout of dry lightning over the Bay Area, have been feeding off dry
vegetation, primed by a historically dry winter and desiccated by a recent
heatwave.
Although
the California landscape has adapted to survive and even thrive amid wildfires,
global heating is fueling more frequent, more extreme blazes, according to
Crystal Kolden, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced. The
recent spate of fires is unusual because peak fire season in California usually
comes in the fall, when powerful offshore winds stoke huge blazes.
As
California continues efforts to contain hundreds of wildfires across the state,
neighboring Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Colorado are coping with wildfires.
Smoke from the west is forecasted to travel across the country.
In and
around the Bay Area, in cities and towns worst affected by fire, schools that
had already delayed opening due to the coronavirus pandemic have further
delayed classes as fires have forced students and teachers to evacuate. In
Santa Cruz, officials wrote to families that school would be suspended through
the end of the month or later, “because we have more staff displaced and
evacuated than we have substitutes”. In nearby Scotts Valley, the local school
superintendent wrote to families that the district had to postpone classes and
“pivot and adjust to the latest crisis before us”.
“I am
sincerely sorry that this is happening and my heart and prayers go out to all
of those affected by this situation,” wrote the superintendent Tanya Krause.
Agencies contributed reporting
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