Here’s what you need to know:
- Northern California is threatened by fire, heat and smoke.
- A historic state park has been badly damaged by fire.
- Coronavirus outbreaks in prisons mean fewer inmates are available to help fight the fires.
- Travis Air Force Base orders mandatory evacuation for some personnel.
- The pandemic has scrambled the state’s traditional evacuation plans.
Northern California is threatened by fire, heat and smoke.
Wildfires continued to rip across Northern California on Thursday, as the state struggled to contain the blazes and to help thousands of people who are fleeing their homes amid a grueling heat wave, the coronavirus pandemic and unsafe air thick with smoke.
A large group of fires burning in wine country west of Sacramento had grown to cover 131,000 acres by Thursday, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire authority. The agency said that, in all, nearly 350,000 acres have burned in Northern and Central California, with many fires sparked by lightning strikes in the high heat and then fanned by winds.
Those conditions helped new fires sprout across the state Wednesday and Thursday, and caused other fires to merge, complicating efforts to contain the combined blazes. Almost two dozen major fires were reported Wednesday, and more than 300 smaller ones. Evacuation orders have affected thousands of people in Northern California. The group of wildfires threatening Vacaville, called the L.N.U. Lightning Complex, has already destroyed more than 105 homes and other buildings. Cal Fire said 30,500 more buildings are under threat.
At least two people have died in the firefighting effort. One was a helicopter pilot on a water-dropping mission who was killed in a crash in Fresno County on Wednesday. Another was a worker for Pacific Gas & Electric who died in Solano County.
California was under intense strain from the heat wave even before the explosion of new fires, with rolling blackouts shutting off power to many residents. The temperature Thursday was expected to again surpass 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Sacramento, Napa and Sonoma Counties.
In Sonoma County, the authorities issued an evacuation warning late Wednesday to the entire city of Healdsburg, which is home to 12,000 people. “Please remain calm,” the city government said in a statement. “Our goal is to increase your state of readiness, not to frighten you.”
East of Silicon Valley, the S.C.U. Lightning Complex group of fires prompted evacuation orders on the edge of San Jose. That combination of about 20 fires grew to 137,475 acres overnight, but has largely been kept away from more populated areas.
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A historic state park has been badly damaged by fire.
California’s oldest state park, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, has sustained extensive damage from the group of fires known as the C.Z.U. August Lighting Complex in Santa Cruz County, according to the California Parks and Recreations Department.
The park is known for its 80 miles of walking trails among the majestic redwoods that are between 1,000 and 2,000 years old.
The fire damaged the park’s headquarters, a one-story building constructed from redwood logs and stone that was built in 1936 and is included in the National Register of Historic Places. Also damaged was the park’s “historic core and campgrounds,” the department said.
The group of fires has grown to cover more than 40,000 acres, fire officials said on Thursday morning, and has destroyed 20 buildings. The Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office said nearly 28,000 people had been ordered to evacuate their homes.
More than two dozen parks were partially or fully closed as the wildfires burned across the state, according to the department.
Coronavirus outbreaks in prisons mean fewer inmates are available to help fight the fires.
As wildfires race across California, civilian firefighters are missing a critical, and usually dependable ally: Inmate firefighting crews.
The fire crews, along with other California prisoners, have been hard-hit by the coronavirus, which is sweeping through the state’s correctional facilities.
In California state prisons, more than 12,000 inmates and guards have been infected, and at least 64 people have died, according to the state corrections department.
This summer, only 90 of the state prison’s 192 inmate fire teams are available to help clear brush and perform other important firefighting tasks, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
While a number of inmate firefighters have become infected, other crews are under quarantine orders. Some firefighters have also been released from prison in recent weeks to reduce overcrowding in prisons and fire camps.
In all, four of the six prisons that train incarcerated firefighters have had coronavirus outbreaks of more than 200 cases each, including the California Institution for Women in Corona, which trains female firefighters. That prison has had 417 cases.
The shortage has forced the state to enlist members of the National Guard and to hire civilian replacements for the inmate crews, officials said.
Members of the inmate crews — who can earn up to just over $5 a day, plus $1 an hour when fighting fires — have been stretched thin for several weeks, said Michelle Garcia, program coordinator at an inmate fire training facility center in Ventura County.
“We’re neglected and we’re overlooked,” she said.
Ms. Garcia said crew members had been drinking out of the same water spigot and that washing hands, social distancing and wearing face masks were afterthoughts.
“Once that fire call hits, it’s fire first,” she said. “Fire doesn’t care about COVID.”
Travis Air Force Base orders mandatory evacuation for some personnel.
Travis Air Force Base in Solano County ordered all “non-mission essential personnel” to evacuate, as the L.N.U. Lightning Complex fires approached on Wednesday night and temporarily closed Interstate 80 north of the base.
More than 14,000 people are employed at the base, about 10 miles southeast of Vacaville, where residents awoke early Wednesday morning to fire trucks blaring evacuation orders. About 7,400 active-duty personnel are stationed at the base, along with about 3,250 Air Force reserve members, according to its website.
Travis was one of the military bases where people evacuated from the Far East early in the coronavirus epidemic were quarantined in February.
The pandemic has scrambled the state’s traditional evacuation plans.
In Riverside, Nevada and Contra Costa Counties, dozens of evacuated families are being sent first to emergency hotel lodging rather than to the high school gyms that usually serve as evacuation centers.
In the coastal town of Pescadero, south of San Francisco, authorities used the high school as an evacuation center on Wednesday. Normally, cots would be set up for people to spend the night. But no one is allowed inside now, so aid workers have been setting up displaced residents at nearby hotels.
Rita Mancera, the executive director of Puente, a social services organization helping evacuees, said people have been bringing their pigs, turkeys, goats, cows and horses to the school parking lot.
Masked volunteers were handing out water, food and hand sanitizer. People waiting at the school have to sit outside or in their cars. Dealing with the evacuees during a pandemic was “kind of overwhelming,” Ms. Mancera said. “We’re asking people to be social distanced.”
In Pescadero, Lynne Bowman gestured to the trailer where she slept.
“This is where I live now,” Ms. Bowman said. She, her husband and her daughter evacuated their house on Tuesday in 45 minutes, bringing clothes, jewelry and their two dogs, Viggo and Hedy.
Just a few days earlier, Ms. Bowman was celebrating her daughter’s wedding, a 20-person socially distanced affair. Now, she is contemplating the confluence of catastrophic events in the area.
“Yeah, pandemic, fire,” she said. “I mean, it is apocalyptic in many ways.”
Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Kellen Browning, Maria Cramer, Thomas Fuller, Rebecca Griesbach, Maura Turcotte and Alan Yuhas.
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