Calif. fires leave at least 6 dead and thousands of homes at risk

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Sky-darkening wildfires that took at least six lives and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes blazed throughout California on Friday as firefighting resources strained under the vastness of the infernos authorities were trying to control.

Three major complexes encompassing dozens of fires chewed through a combined 780 square miles of forests, canyons and rural areas flanking San Francisco on three sides.

Statewide, nearly 12,000 firefighters are battling blazes that have scorched more than 1,200 square miles, said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire.

Crews from Oregon, Idaho and Arizona have arrived to relieve local firefighters, he said, with engines on their way from as far away as Maryland and New Jersey.

Tens of thousands of homes were threatened by flames that drove through dense and bone-dry trees and brush. Many fires were sparked by lightning from brief thunderstorms — nearly 12,000 strikes since last weekend — as a highpressure area over the West brought a dangerous mix of triple-digit weather and monsoonal moisture.

Some fires doubled in size within 24 hours, fire officials said.

With firefighting resources tight, homes in remote, hard-to-get-to places burned unattended. Cal Fire Chief Mark Brunton pleaded with evacuees to quit battling fires on their own.

“We had last night three separate rescues that pulled our vital, very few resources away,” he said.

Rachel Stratman, 35, and her husband, Quentin Lareau, 40, waited for word Friday about their home in the Forest Springs community of Boulder Creek after evacuating this week. She knows one house has burned but has received conflicting information about the rest of the neighborhood.

“It’s so hard to wait and not know,” she said. “I’m still torn if I want people to be going back to the area and videotaping. I know they cause the firefighters distraction, but that’s the only way we know.”

The couple are in a San Jose hotel with medication she needs after undergoing a transplant surgery last month. She collected her mother’s ashes and some clothes while her husband readied the home before they evacuated Tuesday.

The ferocity of the fires was astonishing so early in the fire season, which historically has seen the largest and deadliest blazes when gusty, dry winds blow in the fall.

But the death toll already had reached at least six since the majority of blazes started less than a week ago, with four deaths claimed by fires burning in wine country north of San Francisco.

The bodies of three people were found in a home that burned in Napa, Henry Wofford, spokesman for the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, told the San Francisco Chronicle. In Solano County Sheriff Thomas Ferrara reported the death of a male resident there.

A Pacific Gas & Electric utility worker was found dead Wednesday in a vehicle in the Vacaville area. In central California, a pilot on a water-dropping mission died Wednesday when his helicopter crashed.

At least two other people were missing and more than 30 civilians and firefighters have been injured, authorities said.

MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/AP A burned vehicle is seen Friday near a fire-damaged home in Bonny Doon, California.