‘Critical week’ for fires as weather improves
Forecasters cancel red flag warnings for dry lightning and dangerous winds
As three of the largest fires in California history continued to rage across the Bay Area on Monday, firefighters hustled to take advantage of a welcome respite from treacherous weather conditions to gain the upper hand and keep the blazes from advancing toward more homes.
“The threat of lightning and gusty and erratic winds that accompany thunderstorms (has) passed, so that is going to be good news for the firefighters out there,” meteorologist Cindy Palmer said.
By early Monday morning, forecasters had canceled a red flag warning for dry lightning and dangerous winds that threatened to spark new blazes and further hamper the battle against the massive fires. And closer to the coast, the marine layer was growing thicker, adding a layer of cool air atop the flames in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Chris Bridger, a spokesperson for
Cal Fire at the LNU complex base in Calistoga, said the weather in Wine Country Sunday and Monday was “in our favor.” The thunderstorms and lightning that did occur on Sunday struck mostly in the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada, allowing Bay Area fire crews to make good progress overnight.
“It’s still dry,” Bridger said, but “we’re trying to take advantage of the weather conditions.”
Meanwhile, the hazy smoke that has been shifting around the region’s skies for almost a week is expected to persist at least a few more days.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has issued a Spare the Air alert through Wednesday, with the worst air quality expected in the East Bay and the Santa Clara Valley. Temperatures across much of the Bay Area should remain high, with dry conditions, over the coming days.
So far this year, wildfires have torched 1.4 million acres across the state — more than double that of last year. The record-breaking fires have destroyed more than a thousand homes and structures and forced tens of thousands of Californians to evacuate their homes at a moment’s notice.
Jake Hess, unit chief for the SCU Complex Fire in the South Bay, said California is “essentially living in a megafire era” that requires officials to evacuate people sooner and to clear out larger areas to keep residents out of the way of fast-moving fires.
“These significant incidents have been outpacing themselves every year,” Hess said. “This is a marathon that we’re on. … Through this marathon, we are going to have good days and we are going to have bad days, but
we are going to put this fire to bed.”
As of Monday, California had 625 wildfires actively burning across the state. At least seven people have been killed, including another person who authorities confirmed Monday died in Solano County in the Hennessey Fire, bringing the total there to five.
During a news briefing Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom called this a “critical week as it relates to addressing and suppressing these wildfires here in the state of California.”
More than 14,000 firefighters and 2,400 fire engines have been deployed to the nearly two dozen major fires burning across the state. Newsom has requested 375 additional engines from outside of California, of which about 100 have arrived or are en route.
“Foundationally and fundamentally, we’re deploying every resource at our disposal, every resource that we have within the state, and you’ll see in a moment some of the resources we’ve pulled
out of state into California to battle these historic wildfires,” Newsom said Monday.
The LNU Lightning Complex Fire — California’s second-largest wildfire in history, burning across Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Yolo and Solano counties — received some good news Sunday night in the form of a small amount of rain. It likely wasn’t enough to douse any flames, but even a minimal amount increases the humidity in the air, which can make fuel harder to burn.
“That’s pretty outstanding, all things considered,” Cal Fire spokesman Jay Tracy said. “I chalk that up as a win.”
By Monday, the complex fires had burned 350,030 acres across five counties. The Hennessey Fire, the largest in the complex, was 26% contained, while the Walbridge Fire in Sonoma County was 5% contained.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, firefighters on Monday were scrambling with hand tools and chain saws to cut and scrape protective lines around as many homes
in Boulder Creek as possible and hosing down burning spots as flames from the CZU Complex Fire remained dangerously close to downtown and continued to threaten many houses in the woods to the west.
With several hundred more firefighters having arrived in the past few days, bringing the total to 1,511, crews on the ground were able to take a more aggressive approach against the CZU Complex blaze to protect houses, according to San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Novelli.
The crews’ primary goal is to keep the blaze away from the town and the villages to the south in the San Lorenzo Valley and make sure it doesn’t jump Highway 9, Novelli said. By Monday afternoon, reports from firefighters and patrolling police indicated that the fire was no longer imminently threatening the communities of Ben Lomond or Felton.
Still, Novelli cautioned, “Nobody’s letting their guard down.” The CZU Lightning
Complex Fire covers 78,000 acres and was 13% contained.
Palo Alto Fire Department Capt. David Dahl was among those volunteering with the Boulder Creek Volunteer Fire Department to fight the fire in the town where he was born and raised and still lives. So far, his house a half-mile uphill from Boulder Creek’s historic downtown strip along Highway 9 has survived the blaze.
But although Dahl was cautiously optimistic Monday evening about the battle to keep flames from laying waste to his town and his home, hidden hot spots remained in the thick forest around the town. “All it takes is a big wind change and that can become a firing front and take out a whole neighborhood,” said Dahl, 35. “There are a lot of older wooden houses here in hardto-get-to places. They just go up so fast.”
Crews in the South Bay working on the SCU Complex Fire — the third-largest blaze in state history — have built containment lines around some of the northern and eastern edges of the 347,196acre fire, which officials said was 10% contained, and are trying to ensure it doesn’t keep moving south toward Pacheco Pass and San Benito County.
Cal Fire officials said their main priority now is to prevent the blaze, which to this point has primarily been burning in open space and ranch land, from moving farther west toward the populated areas of San Jose, Milpitas and Morgan Hill.
“This fire is, by far, a long ways away from being done or completed as we work toward containment,” Cal Fire incident commander Jeff Veik said at a briefing Monday afternoon. “This fire still has the potential to grow in significant acreage in many different areas.”
For the thousands of residents who have evacuated their homes over the past week, most are still in limbo, unsure of when they’ll be able to return home or what they will return to.
Jessica Madani, 32, left her Felton home in the middle of the night on Wednesday with her husband and three young children — from age 6 to just 9 months old. Since then, they’ve spent a few days in a hotel in Campbell and are now staying at an Airbnb, which will run out on Friday.
“The uncertainty is definitely the hardest part,” Madani said. “We’re trying to make it fun for the kids, but it’s definitely hard to bounce around.”
Although Madani had lived in the San Lorenzo Valley her whole life, she never thought a fire like this would happen.
“We definitely weren’t prepared for something like this,” she said, specifically noting forgotten toys that are now dearly missed by her kids. “After this, I’ll be more cautious to have more things packed up and ready.”