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Some 1,875 square miles of California have succumbed to the wildfires that ignited early last week. To compare, the Grand Canyon covers 1,902 square miles. Rim-to-rim, it takes hikers around three days to get from the North Rim to the South Rim. For another perspective, the area of fire damage in California right now is larger than Rhode Island's 1,212 square miles, and just shy of the state of Delaware, which covers 1,954 square miles.
Since the start of the year, a total of 1.4 million acres have burned and a staggering 1.2 million of those acres (roughly the size of the Grand Canyon National Park) are a result of a rash of fires that began in the last week, Newsom said.
At this same time last year, 56,000 acres had been charred due to wildfires 25 times less than this year. In 2019, the state saw most of its wildfire activity in the fall.
There are currently 624 fires in the state and 17 of those are considered major conflagrations. The three largest groups of fires are in the greater Bay Area: the LNU Lightning Complex in the North Bay, the CZU August Lightning Complex in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the CSU in the East Bay and Central Valley. www.sfgate.com/...
Map of current fires. Move map and/or zoom in/out to see where fires are and worst parts of fires within those areas (dot size and color chart on left side.) Also shows evacuation order areas.
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There are currently fire crews in the area who have been dispatched from Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, and more are on the way from Montana, Utah and Texas.
Tim Ernst, a Cal Fire operations section chief, noted some good news: the Deer Zone, one of the three zones making up the SCU Complex Fire, has now been "completely contained," with Cal Fire and other visiting fire crews "eliminating any further threat" in that particular area. The priority in containment now is primarily focused on the southern and western boundary of the fire (in the Calaveras Zone). The northern and eastern boundaries are being well maintained at the moment.
Jake Hess, a Cal Fire unit chief for Santa Clara, gave some broader perspective on the SCU Lightning Complex Fire as well as the LNU Lightning Complex fire burning to the north, respectively the third and second-largest fires in California history.
"We are essentially living in a mega-fire era," he said. "We have folks that have been working [at Cal Fire] for the last five years [and] this is all they understand is mega fires since they started. These significant incidents have been outpacing themselves every year. With that this is going to be a marathon that we're on ... We're setting a pace so we can get to the end of this marathon."
Hess also warned that the margin of error for handling lightning-prompted fires with the "unprecedented" fuel beds in the area is "zero," noting, "We're going to have to evacuate people more often and give people early warnings."
Point Reyes National Seashore (Marin Co.) —
Helpers have arrived —
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