Tide has turned in fires, but the threat’s not over
‘Little wins’ pile up after week of destruction, as separate blaze forces new evacuations
After a hellish week, fire crews have gotten the upper hand on three destructive wildfires that have torched more than 800,000 acres throughout the Bay Area.
The firefighters spent Wednesday reinforcing containment lines, and authorities worked on plans to let tens of thousands of residents back into the towns they fled as the flames advanced.
Such progress seemed unimaginable a week ago, when one fire tore through suburban Vacaville and jumped eight-lane Interstate 80, another barreled toward Boulder Creek and other communities tucked into the Santa Cruz Mountains, and yet another threatened Lick Observatory and forced evacuations up to the edges of San Jose — all while fatigued, shorthanded firefighters warned they didn’t have the personnel to contain the wind-driven flames.
Getting to this point took days and nights of work from weary fire crews — and civilians who banded to
gether to protect their communities — before extra reinforcements and better weather arrived and helped firefighters get a toehold on the blazes into the weekend.
Then more good luck: When more predicted lightning storms spared the Bay Area overnight Sunday and Monday, the tide turned.
“All the little wins we’re getting right now are accumulating, and it’s for the good,” said Edwin Zuniga, a spokesman for Cal Fire’s San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit. “We can’t take our foot off the gas, per se — this is a time to push even harder.”
Crews were still fighting the fires Wednesday, and the threat was far from over: The Hennessey Fire, part of the LNU Complex Fire, forced new evacuations in the Rumsey area of Yolo County in the afternoon.
Still, by Wednesday evening, crews had increased containment of the 80,137acre CZU Complex Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains to 21 percent.
The SCU Complex Fire to the east, now the secondlargest blaze in California’s history, has burned 367,371 acres with 30 percent containment Wednesday evening.
And the North Bay’s deadly and destructive LNU Complex Fire, the third-largest in state history (360,868 acres), grew by less than 1,000 acres overnight as firefighters reported it was now 33 percent contained.
The three fires have destroyed nearly 2,000 structures, about 1,300 of which were torched by the LNU Complex Fires. Six people have died in the blazes, one in the CZU Complex and five in the LNU Complex.
Early on, it seemed as if the outcome would be far worse.
Thunderstorms that rolled through Northern California two hot weekends ago delivered an estimated 13,000 lightning strikes statewide, sparking smoldering fires in remote, hard-to-reach areas, and firefighters couldn’t get to all of them in time.
Soon, the winds picked up. Temperatures soared. And, Zuniga said, those smoldering fires eventually struck a “jackpot” of dry vegetation.
“It was primed and ready to go with one spark,” he said. The fire “just took off.”
As wildfires in the Bay Area exploded through the middle of the week, hundreds more were burning throughout California, apparently overwhelming the state’s vaunted mutual aid system. Few out-of-area firefighters were available to relieve exhausted local crews, and the inmate firefighting teams California heavily relies on were limited by coronavirus lockdowns and early releases meant to stem the virus’ spread in state prisons.
Smoky conditions and wind limited the use of air support in those early days, making the job of firefighters on the ground even tougher.
“Normally we hear the planes dropping water, and the engines. That’s a welcome sight,” said Greta Zeit, a 74-year-old resident of Middletown in Lake County. Instead, with the Hennessey Fire raging, it was eerily quiet. “It was like, ‘Oh, well, maybe we are on our own,’” Zeit said.
The fires that make up the LNU Complex more than quadrupled in size between the morning of Aug. 19 and the evening of Aug. 20, from a 46,225-acre blaze that threatened 1,900 structures to a 215,000-acres monster with 30,500 structures in its path. The force fighting the blaze grew far slower, rising from 567 firefighters to 1,059 over the same time period.
Fearing the cavalry wouldn’t arrive in time, neighbors in Middletown put together their own mini fire brigade — including a trailer with 300 gallons of water and a hose — to fight the Hennessey Fire.
Residents did the same in Boulder Creek and Bonny Doon, in defiance of evacuation orders, as well as in rural Sonoma County.
Kelly Dicke and her neighbors outside Healdsburg banded together when their corner of the Wallbridge Fire seemed deserted, cutting dozer lines and pumping water to save houses in the canyons around the area. They were prepared — Dicke’s husband is a road worker who contracts with Cal Fire to cut dozer lines, while she used to work with the agency and can drive the water tender.
While she praised local fire crews for doing what they could, Dicke said, “We saw no one.”
Things started to change toward the end of the week as fires elsewhere in the state were brought under control, freeing up crews to redeploy to the Bay Area. Firefighters and equipment also started arriving in California from neighboring states and as far as Kansas, Montana and Texas.
The Hennessey Fire continues to threaten Middletown, but Zeit said she feels better seeing more fire crews around the area in the past few days. It’s no longer eerily quiet, she said. She’s seen many fire engines, including at Clear Lake, and heard the rumble of helicopters.
“They really pounded it yesterday,” she said of the fire crews.
Around the time those reinforcements arrived, the heatwave and winds were subsiding, replaced by milder temperatures and a thick marine layer that pushed moisture inland. That weather limits the fires’ spread and lets crews be more aggressive with their containment efforts, Zuniga said. Better conditions also allowed firefighters to ramp up air support.
Forecasts for the coming week call for warmer weather and drier conditions but nothing to the extent of last week’s heatwave.
Firefighters worked Wednesday to protect Ben Lomond and Felton with controlled burns and bolster the containment line they built on its northern and western boundaries.
“We’re more than confident that (we’re) going to be able to hold the fire,” Zuniga said.