Wildfires are larger than ever, but not deadlier

The square miles of land that have burned this year are more than double the previous year’s record.

SAN FRANCISCO » With months still to go in California’s fire season, the state has already shattered records for the amount of land scorched in a single year — more than 4 million acres to date, with one blaze alone surpassing the 1 million-acre mark. Five of the 10 largest wildfires in state history have occurred since August.

Beyond their size, how do the scope and devastation of this year’s fires compare to previous wildfire seasons in California? Here are some comparisons:

4 million acres

The 6,250 square miles that have burned this year are more than double the previous record for the most land burned in a single year in the state — roughly the size of Connecticut. The previous record was set in 2018 when deadly wildfires destroyed 1.67 million acres (2,609 square miles). The August Complex, burning in the Coast Range between San Francisco and the Oregon border, surpassed 1 million acres, another record.

“We used to think a 50,000-acre fire was huge. Now we’re dealing with an average of over 300,000 acres,” said Scott McLean, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, who called this year’s blazes “horrendous.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom said the amount of land scorched by the August Complex is larger than all the recorded fires in California between 1932 and 1999.

Death & destruction

The wildfires have incinerated at least 8,700 structures, many of them homes, from the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles to Napa Valley and up to the Oregon border. There have been 31 people killed in the fires. While those figures are terrible, the number of fatalities has been higher in previous years. Many of this year’s biggest fires are burning on largely unpopulated federal land.