Personal blog about states
Claremont-bear. CA . 318,775 acres burned. Burning for 140 days. Castle. CA . 170,647 acres burned. Burning for 138 days. 95% Butte, Tehama, Glenn Lightning Complex. CA . 926 acres burned. Burning for 140 days. 98% Creek. CA . Burning for 12 days. Mountain View. CA . Burning for 48 days.
So even though two of the largest fires in California’s history are now fully contained, firefighters are still battling two other blazes that have scorched more than 100,000 acres and no relief is in sight. High heat is expected in Southern California , including Los Angeles and San Diego on Friday.
According to a press release by Cal Fire , the fire began on September 5, 2020, at 10:23 a.m. in El Dorado Ranch Park, Yucaipa. A smoke-generating pyrotechnic device caught fire and from there the flames spread from the park to the north onto the Yucaipa Ridge.
August Complex Fire now the largest in recent California history, Creek Fire breaks top 10. The August Complex Fire in Northern California is now the largest fire in the state since record-keeping began.
Severe drought, extreme winds and multiple ignitions fueled the most destructive wildfires in state history. Roughly 1.07 million acres burned during the 2020 season, the second-most on record. The cost to fight the fires was also high — $354 million.
The El Dorado Fire in Southern California was caused by a “smoke generating pyrotechnic device,” said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention in a statement. The fire started Saturday morning at El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa, about 72 miles east of Los Angeles.
In early September 2020 , a combination of a record-breaking heat wave, and Diablo and Santa Ana winds sparked more fires and explosively grew the active fires , with the August Complex more than doubling the Mendocino Complex’s size to become California’s largest recorded wildfire .
Evacuations were issued in North Fork, Bass Lake, Big Creek , Shaver, Huntington Lake, Tollhouse and Auberry, California . Creek Fire (2020)
Creek Fire | |
---|---|
Cost | 193 million (2020 USD) |
Date(s) | September 4, 2020 – December 24, 2020 |
Cause | Under investigation |
Buildings destroyed | 856 |
As of Tuesday, more than two million acres have burned across the state so far in 2020, which makes this a record year, surpassing 2018, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
As the toll from California’s wildfires grows higher year after year, the state’s future appears fiery and hazy with smoke. More than half of the acres burned each year in the western United States can be attributed to climate change .
Eric Michael Smith, 38, of Redding, is accused of setting the fires in June and July in the forest in Shasta County using a “virtually untraceable cigarette lighter or pen torch,” according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.
The forest fire that incinerated northern British Columbia and Alberta grew to a final size of over 3.5 million acres. The largest wildfire in modern history was the Black Friday Bushfire in Australia’s Victoria State in January 1939, burning some 4.9 million acres and claiming 71 lives.
August Complex fire
The Chinchaga Fire started in logging slash in British Columbia, Canada, on 1 June 1950 that grew out of control and ended five months later on 31 October in Alberta; in that time, it burned approximately 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of boreal forest.