Terilyn Steverson, 28, said she felt helpless much of Wednesday as she waited to hear about the fate of the Vacaville home she grew up in – a home that has been in her family since the 1970s. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen An airplane drops fire retardant over homes in the Spanish Flat area of Napa, California, as flames rage through on 18 August 2020. But I explained to the kids we can replace things, we can rebuild the house. “My 14-year-old was freaking out, crying. “The fire was moving so fast – and it was engulfing everything around us,” she said. So when a neighbor knocked on her door at 4.30am, urging her to evacuate, she told her four kids to grab their most precious possessions – “the things money can’t buy” – and tucked the whole family into the car.Īrbelaez Brown, who had worked as a disaster relief responder for the Red Cross, said she had been trained to keep her wits about but was nonetheless shaken by the fire’s ferocity. The night before, the sky had been glowing red and clouds of smoke were raining ash down Valerie Arbelaez Brown’s street. Ash sprinkled swaths of the state, dusting cities in gray. Television reporters and local residents shared images of roads, fully flanked by flames, blackened land and columns of smoke swirling through neighborhoods. At least 50 structures were destroyed and four people were injured, according to officials. In central California, a pilot on a water-dropping mission in western Fresno county died after his helicopter crashed on Wednesday morning, Cal Fire said in a statement.Īt dawn on Wednesday, firefighters and police officers went door-to-door in Vacaville, in Solano county, rushing to evacuate residents. The flames have destroyed at least 50 buildings and structures and remain largely uncontained, and come just three years after devastating fires killed 22 and destroyed many wineries in the region. The lack of backup from crews made up of prisoners has also hindered the firefighting effort because the inmates are locked down in jail due to Covid-19.Īsked how officials will manage the overlapping crises of heat, fire and the pandemic all at once, Newsom responded: “The future happens here first.”Ī cluster of wildfires in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties now covers an estimated 46,225 acres, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. The unusual lightning storm and a historic heatwave have led to an especially fierce fire season this year, officials said. The state was struck by lightning 10,849 times over the course of 72 hours, he said. “We are challenged right now,” the governor said. “But it's not something we can change in a year.The state is currently battling 367 known fires, Gavin Newsom reported at a press conference on Wednesday. “We're not doomed to endure this," said Collins of Berkeley Forests. Without greater investment in prevention and systematic changes to combat the effects of climate change, experts say California almost certainly has more record-setting fire seasons in store. “We end up having to hoard all of the money that is intended for fire prevention, because we’re afraid we’re going to need it to actually fight fires.” “We have to keep borrowing from funds that are intended for forest management,” said Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in a message to Congress in 2017. Spending on suppression has leapt to more than half of the agency’s budget, up from 15% a few years before. Those costs could balloon this year, as concerns about the spread of the coronavirus have caused agencies to adopt a more costly and aggressive firefighting strategy.įorest Service scientists have long advocated for spending more on fire prevention, including vegetation clearing and prescribed burns, cautioning that an approach focused mainly on suppression will not work.
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