Fires grow as storm moves in
Besieged Bay Area braces for new round of lightning
A massive cluster of fires burning across several counties including Sonoma, Napa and Solano became the second largest in California history Sunday, as firefighters and residents braced for a potential new round of lightning storms that could bring wind gusts and spark new blazes across Northern California.
The LNU Lightning Complex is one of three groups of wildfires that are spreading through dry fields and forests and threatening communities in and around the Bay Area. Firefighters have had a difficult time containing the unprecedented siege of blazes sparked a week ago during a round of thunderstorms that brought lightning but little rain amid a recordsetting heat wave.
A group of fires raging in
Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and several other counties, the SCU Lightning Complex, became the third largest in state history and prompted new evacuations overnight Saturday and warnings for parts of Fremont, Pleasanton and Livermore.
South and west of there, the CZU Lightning Complex slowed somewhat in its push through the Santa Cruz Mountains. But it remained within striking distance of several small towns, including Boulder Creek.
Tens of thousands have been evacuated and hundreds of homes burned, and four have died in the Bay Area. The fires were sending smoke into Bay Area cities, making for some of the worst air quality the region has seen. Many parks were closed Sunday because of the smoke, another disruption for Bay Area residents already cooped up for months during the coronavirus pandemic.
Conditions early Sunday were calm and favorable to making progress, and Cal Fire officials reported slight increases in containment on several fronts. But they warned that it could take weeks to get control of the blazes. There are too few firefighters and not enough equipment to handle this many fires of this magnitude simultaneously.
Cal Fire representatives said that the LNU, which stands for Lake Napa Unit and has burned 347,630 acres in Napa, Sonoma, Lake and Solano counties, and was 21% contained by Sunday evening.
“We’re going to be here for a while: weeks and possibly longer,” Cal Fire Unit Chief Shana Jones said at a Yolo County news conference Sunday afternoon. Right behind the LNU in size is the SCU Lightning Complex — which had burned more than 340,000 acres of Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.
Either or both could soon surpass the Mendocino Complex fires, which burned swaths of Mendocino, Lake, Colusa and Glenn counties in September 2018, was contained at 459,000 acres, having destroyed 280 structures.
Between these fires that are rimming the Bay Area in a giant pincer move, Cal Fire was spread so thin that local departments in Yolo County had to start the fight before Cal Fire could free up its own crews.
“As Cal Fire’s unit chief, I don’t remember a time that this occurred,” Jones said.
Alameda County had largely been spared from evacuation orders until Sunday morning, when the SCU Lightning Complex got closer to homes in the foothills east of Fremont and south of Livermore.
The evacuations orders spread as 25 mph wind gusts picked up in the evening. Firefighter Ryan Cramer, who has been working the SCU fire since Tuesday, said his crew can’t help but feel spread thin because of a lack of air support and too few engines as California battles a host of fires simultaneously.
“It’s just a large expansive area, and not the normal amount of resources,” Cramer, 44, said. “These fires are growing, and growing and growing.”
Late Sunday afternoon, Cal Fire was trying to bolster its forces by hiring as many volunteer, military or outofregion firefighters and equipment as possible ahead of Sunday night’s expected thunderstorm.
“This is absolutely instrumental: If there are any cooperators out there that we have not reached out to or have slipped through the cracks, get to the Alameda County Fairgrounds to our 10 o’clock cooperators meeting,” Cal Fire unit chief Jake Hess said. “This is going to be a very longterm incident … and our troops are exhausted.”
Also burning out of control but slowing slightly Sunday was the CZU Lightning Complex in coastal San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, which had burned 71,000 acres and was 8% contained. A number of communities remained under threat.
“I’m definitely nervous about my shop,” said Justin Acton, 36, the owner of Boulder Creek Pizza & Pub, who had evacuated from his home in Ben Lomond to Santa Cruz. “I keep looking at the fire on the map and see it getting closer and closer.”
Already, though, with at least 129 homes destroyed by the CZU fires as of Sunday morning and more burning throughout the day, things won’t be the same for area residents. As many as three of Acton’s employees don’t have houses to go back to.
“There’s going to be some change,” Acton said. “I’m hoping that the core of the community stays here, but this was a big thing and it could really shake some people out.”
Officials on Sunday announced the CZU’s first known fatality. The victim was found in a remote area of Last Chance Road just southwest of Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff ’s Chief Deputy Chris Clark said it took a helicopter to retrieve the remains.
“I don’t want to be standing up here, nor does our office want to be recovering people that are victims of fire,” Clark said at a news briefing. “We got into this job to help people . ... I think it’s one of the darkest periods we’ve been in with this fire.”
CZU officials later in the day issued a list of evacuation warnings for the western region of Santa Clara County, including ones for Foothills Park and the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve.
Nowhere was the battle line drawn as heavily as in western Sonoma County, where Guerneville on the Russian River had been evacuated while nearby Healdsburg had not.
The normally touristy wine town was mostly quiet Sunday afternoon, the presence of fire indicated only by the smoky haze in the air and the sound of helicopters whirring overhead as they shuttled water to the Walbridge Fire, part of the LNU complex, to the west of town.
That calm stood in stark contrast to fire hot spots just miles outside of town where residents have been evacuated with homes and property burned and ash still falling like fresh snow. On Mill Creek Road, a short drive out of town, small fires still poured from destroyed tree stumps and smoke billowed out of the ground as if coming from the earth itself.
Helicopters swung low over the road to a nearby property to fill huge buckets of water and immediately head back to the fire, making dozens of trips. Some structures have been badly damaged by the fires along Mill Creek Road, with vehicles and other abandoned belongings blackened and charred.
The firefight was also raging further north near Lake Sonoma, where the hilly terrain is blanketed with smoke like thick fog. The area was also closed to public access and a deserted Lake Sonoma Bridge stretched across the water seemingly into smoky nothingness.
On a ridge overlooking the lake, a team of Cal Fire firefighters were resting in a parking lot stained pink and red with fire retardant from aerial tankers after coming off a 24hour shift. They said good progress had been made protecting some homes nearby, but some areas near the lake would likely still burn. That area is mostly seeing flareups during the afternoons when the sun heats vegetation and some of their recent work has involved hiking the hillsides near the lake to out spot fires before they could spread further, the firefighters said.
The National Weather Service issued a red flag fire warning starting at 5 a.m. Sunday through 5 p.m. Monday, and while weather service forecasters said the thunderstorms would probably begin early Sunday evening and potentially last until early Monday, the lightning strikes were not expected to be as severe as last weekend.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District extended its Spare the Air alert through Wednesday. Air quality is expected to be unhealthy, with the heaviest impacts in the East Bay and Santa Clara Valley, according to the agency.
By Sunday afternoon, air quality in Pleasanton and Livermore reached levels considered “hazardous,” the worst rating in the Bay Area so far in this smoke siege year far. Air quality in Concord, Vallejo, Napa, San Rafael and San Pablo reached “very unhealthy” levels, and it was “unhealthy” in several other areas.
Even San Francisco, insulated from the fires, was smoky Sunday morning. At the Fort Mason Center Farmers’ Market, everybody was masked up and shoppers could barely make out Marin County to the north. By midday, a golden haze had covered the city, suggesting late autumn, not midsummer.
But an onshore flow of ocean air had been starting and stopping and shortly after noon, there seemed to be a positive development when the first forlorn foghorn finally blew on the Golden Gate Bridge.