Firefighters make headway against lightning-sparked California wildfires

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California fire officials on Sunday reported significant headway battling the two largest of dozens of lightning-sparked blazes raging in and around the greater San Francisco Bay area since mid-August, though 60,000 people remained under evacuation.

As of Sunday firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around 56% of the perimeter of a colossal wildfire that has burned more than 375,000 acres across five counties north of the bay, including a swath of the Napa and Sonoma valley wine country region.

That marked a major gain from 41% containment listed a day earlier for the blaze, dubbed the LNU Lightning Complex fire, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

Containment of a slightly larger fire called the SCU Lightning Complex, which has charred more than 377,000 acres in four counties east and south of the bay, grew to 50% on Sunday, up from 40% on Saturday, CalFire said.

Those two blazes together – which rank as the second- and third-largest wildfires on record in California – account for half of total acreage set ablaze during the past two weeks in a series of catastrophic lightning storms.

Firefighters, helped by cooler weather after a record-breaking heat wave abated, have gained ground elsewhere across the state, as well.

“We definitely have increased containment on all of the major fires, evacuations are being lifted and weather conditions are more favorable,” CalFire spokeswoman Christine McMorrow told Reuters by phone. “We are definitely making progress.”

Nearly 14,00 lightning strikes, mostly in central and northern California, have ignited hundreds of individual fires since Aug. 15, many of which merged into bigger conflagrations. Those fires have collectively charred more than 1.42 million acres – a landscape larger than the state of Delaware, according to CalFire.

Seven fatalities have been confirmed, and nearly 2,500 homes and other structures have been reduced to ruin. Smoke from the fires also badly degraded air quality throughout the region, adding to health hazards already posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

While CalFire said more than 60,000 residents remained displaced throughout the fire zone as of Sunday morning, McMorrow said “quite a few” evacuation orders and warnings were being lifted.

Meteorologists said the recent spate of dry lightning, the heaviest seen in California in more than a decade, was linked to the same atmospheric high-pressure system that caused a lengthy heat wave, which in turn further desiccated dense, fire-prone vegetation across the state.

Scientists point to lengthy droughts and longer-than-normal stretches of extreme heat as evidence of climate change that has steadily intensified and prolonged wildfire season in California and across the Western United States in recent years.

Climatologist Zach Zobel said California is on track to overtake the nearly 2 million acres burned in 2018, when the state suffered its deadliest wildfire in history, as well as the most acreage burned on record gong back to 1987.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Fast-spreading California wildfire forces evacuations in Yolo County

Smoke rises in distance from County Fire near County Road 63 and Highway 16 in Rumsey Canyon in this #CountyFire image on social media in Brooks, California, U.S., July 2, 2018. Courtesy California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection/Handout via REUTERS

By Jon Herskovitz

(Reuters) – A fast-growing wildfire that broke out over the weekend in Northern California, fueled by parched lands and high winds, prompted evacuations on Sunday and sent ash spewing over a wide area of the region, officials said.

More than 1,200 people were fighting the so-called County Fire, located about 75 miles (120 kms) northeast of San Francisco. It has blazed through around 32,500 acres (13,150 hectares) and was 2 percent contained as of Sunday evening, officials said.

The sky turned orange in parts of the San Francisco Bay area due to the blaze, with many residents waking up to a thin coating of ash on windows, cars and lawns.

Residents in some rural areas of Yolo County were ordered to leave their homes as the flames advanced, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

“It’s going to be headed into some populated areas of small communities in the near future if it is not curtailed,” Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean said in an interview.

As of June 29 of this year, wildfires have burned through nearly 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) in the United States, well above the average of about 2 million acres for the same calendar period over the last 10 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, a monitoring group.

Parched conditions in the U.S. West and Southwest have led to a rash of wildfires this year, with about 40 major blazes burning as of the end of June in an area from Washington State to New Mexico, the agency said.

More than 9,000 firefighters and 100 helicopters have been dispatched to battle the various blazes, cutting containment lines on the ground and dropping fire retardant from the air, the agency said.

California and Colorado have been hard hit this year, with the largest wildfire in Colorado, the 416 Fire, charring almost 47,000 acres about 13 miles (21 km) north of Durango in the southwestern part of the state. It is 37 percent contained, according to state data.

An ongoing drought across much of the Southwest and West and a ridge of warm air that can produce high winds have made the area susceptible to wildfires, said Scott Marsh, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

“In a drought-stricken area, once you get a spark, it is off to the races,” he said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Paul Simao & Simon Cameron-Moore)

Earthquake in Gulf of Alaska sparks brief California tsunami fears

Vehicles are seen during a tsunami warning evacuation in Kodiak, Alaska, U.S., January 23, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. Instagram @JUPITERTHEPRODUCER.ASTORIA via REUTERS

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – Alaska and parts of western Canada braced for a possible tsunami on Tuesday after a magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck the Gulf of Alaska, sparking evacuations in coastal Alaska and a tsunami warning for California that was later lifted.

In Alaska, people packed into high schools and other evacuation centers after the quake hit shortly after midnight local time (0900 GMT).

Officials had warned residents as far south as San Francisco to be ready to evacuate coastal areas but later lifted tsunami watches for California, Oregon and Washington states as well as coastal British Colombia in Canada.

In Alaska, where a tsunami advisory remained in place as of 3:12 a.m. local time (1212 GMT).

Residents gathered in shelters on Kodiak Island, the closest land point to the quake, around 160 miles (250 km) southeast of Chiniak, Alaska, at a depth of 25 km – considered shallow but with broader damage – according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the quake, which was initially measured at magnitude 8.2.

“People are fine,” said Neil Hecht, assistant principal of Kodiak High School, which was sheltering a few hundred people. “Spirits are high. Everyone is doing well here.”

Long lines of traffic formed in coastal communities including Homer and Seward, Alaska, residents warned on social media.

In Homer, a few hundred cars were packed into its high school parking lot. Shawn Biessel, a 32-year-old park ranger, and his mother were in the lot, a few hundred feet above sea level.

“It was a really obvious, pretty strong, long quake. A good rumbler,” Biessel said in a phone interview. “It went on for a solid minute and after a while we thought we should get outside.”

Police drove through Biessel’s neighborhood with flashing lights to alert residents to evacuate, Biessel said.

“Please heed local warnings to move inland or to higher ground,” Alaska Governor Bill Walker said in a statement.

San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management briefly warned residents within three blocks of the Pacific Ocean or five blocks of San Francisco Bay to prepare to evacuate. That warning was lifted when the tsunami watch was lifted.

An initial tsunami watch for Hawaii was canceled.

Japan’s meteorological agency said it was monitoring the situation but did not issue a tsunami alert.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Andrea Hopkins in Ottawa; Writing by Scott Malone and Robin Pomeroy; Editing by John Stonestreet and Jeffrey Benkoe)