Some of California’s largest ever fires yesterday raged across the state, forcing tens of thousands from their homes as the governor called for international help to fight the blazes.
About 12,000 lightning strikes have hit across the state within 72 hours, officials said, sparking the fires that left thick smoke blanketing large areas of central and northern California.
“We simply haven’t seen anything like this in many, many years,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday.
Photo: AP
The two largest blazes — dubbed the SCU Lightning Complex and the LNU Lightning Complex — had burned a total of just less than 240,000 hectares and nearly 500 structures.
Wineries in the famed Napa and Sonoma regions, which are still reeling from blazes in the past few years, are under threat by the SCU Complex — the 10th-largest fire recorded.
Five deaths have been linked to the latest flare-ups, with four bodies recovered on Thursday, including three from a burned house in a rural area of Napa County.
Nature reserves were also ravaged. The Big Basin Redwoods State Park said in a statement that some of its historic buildings had been destroyed by flames.
The park, where more than 500-year-old giant redwood trees can be found, was “extensively damaged” it said.
Scorching temperatures and bone-dry conditions had spurred the flames, Cal Fire assistant deputy director Daniel Berlant said, although some progress at containing the fires had been made.
“We could again experience a lightning storm so that has us remaining on high alert,” Berlant said.
About 119,000 people have been evacuated from the area, with many struggling to find shelter and hesitating to go to centers set up by authorities because of coronavirus risks.
Some in counties south of San Francisco opted to sleep in trailers along the Pacific Ocean as they fled nearby fires, while tourists in Santa Cruz County were urged to leave to free up accommodation for those evacuating their houses.
Fire crews, surveillance equipment and other firefighting hardware was coming in from several states including Oregon, New Mexico and Texas, to fight the fires Newsom said.
However, faced with the sheer scope of the disaster, he also asked for help from Canada and Australia, which he said had “the world’s best firefighters.”
Most of the fires are burning in unpopulated areas and have blazed through about 312,000 hectares statewide — an area the size of Rhode Island state — he said.
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