A fire’s brutal aftermath
COTTS VALLEY, Calif. — Three massive wildfires chewed through parched Northern California landscape Sunday as firefighters raced to dig breaks and make other preparations ahead of a frightening weather system. That system was packing high winds and more of the lightning that sparked the huge blazes and scores of other fires around the state, putting nearly 250,000 people under evacuation orders and warnings.
At the CZU Lightning Complex fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains. south of San Francisco, authorities said their effort was hindered by people who refused to heed evacuation orders and those who were using the chaos to steal. Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said 100 officers were patrolling and anyone not authorized to be in an evacuation zone would be arrested.
“What we’re hearing from the community is that there’s a lot of looting going on,” Hart said. He said eight people have been arrested or cited and “there’s going to be more.”
The Santa Cruz fire is one of the “complexes,” or groups of fires, burning on all sides of the San Francisco Bay Area. They were started by lightning strikes that were among 12,000 registered in the state in the past week.
The National Weather Service issued a “red flag” warning through Monday afternoon for the droughtstricken area, meaning extreme fire conditions including high temperatures, low humidity and wind gusts up to 65 mph that “may result in dangerous and unpredictable fire behavior.”
In nearly a week, firefighters have gotten no more than the 17% containment for the LNU Lightning Complex fire in wine country north of San Francisco. It’s been the most destructive blaze, accounting for five deaths and 845 destroyed homes and other buildings. It and a fire burning southeast of the Bay Area are among the five largest fires in state history, with both burning more than 500 square miles.
Holly Hansen, an evacuee from the LNU fire, was among evacuees from the community of Angwin being allowed to go back into their homes for an hour to retrieve belongings. She and her three dogs waited five hours in her SUV for their turn.
“It’s horrible. I lived in Sonoma during the (2017)
Tubbs Fire, so this is time No. 2 for me. It’s horrible when you have to think about what to take,“she said. “I think it’s a very raw human base emotion to have fear of fire and losing everything. It’s frightening.”
Meantime, firefighters were frantically preparing for thunderstorms that will bring high winds and “dry” lightning, a term used when such storms have little or no rain. Brunton said while he’s confident firefighters did the most with the time they had to prepare, he’s not sure what to expect.
“There’s a lot of potential for things to really go crazy out there,” he said.
Since Aug. 15, more than 500 fires of varying sizes have burned throughout California, scorching 1.2 million acres. Of those, about two dozen major fires were attracting much of the state’s resources.
Most of the damage was caused by the three complex fires. They have burned 1,175 square miles, destroyed almost 1,000 homes and other structures and killed five people, three of whom who were found in a home in an area under an evacuation order.
Other casualties included ancient redwood trees at California’s oldest state park, Big Basin Redwoods, plus the park’s headquarters and campgrounds.