SACRAMENTO – Wind-driven wildfires raked Northern California for a second day yesterday, including a raging forest fire that forced hundreds to evacuate in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
ORVILLE MYERS / Monterey County Herald
A fire at Fort Hunter Liggett in Monterey County had burned 4,200 acres by yesterday. The extreme fire danger is expected to last through today.
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The Santa Cruz fire flared two weeks after a blaze two miles away scorched 4,200 acres and destroyed three dozen homes. Last night, mandatory evacuations were ordered for 500 residents in the heavily forested hills. Voluntary evacuations were in place for another 1,000 residents.
The fast-moving fire in the Bonny Doon area northwest of Santa Cruz grew to 300 acres shortly after it broke out about 3 p.m. It could spread to as many as 1,000 acres before firefighters are able to slow down the flames, Battalion Chief Paul Van Gerwen said.
Hot temperatures, steady winds and dry vegetation created conditions like those that fed the earlier blaze. Those conditions prevailed throughout the north, where hundreds of firefighters were on fire lines from the North Coast wine country to the Central Valley.
For a second day, erratic wind gusts surprised firefighters who were overrun by flames.
Two are career firefighters from Cal Fire, and the third is a volunteer with the Placer County Fire Department. They were taken to the University of California Davis Medical Center regional burn center in Sacramento.
The burn center also was treating a 21-year veteran of the Sacramento Metro Fire Department who was injured on Tuesday while trying to protect a mobile home near a grass fire southeast of Sacramento.
A department spokesman said a fire captain suffered second-and third-degree burns to his hands and arms and will need several surgeries and rehabilitation. His two crew members were able to get inside their fire engine and escape injury.
The injuries to four firefighters in less than 24 hours show just how fast and dangerous wind-whipped grass fires can be, experts in fire behavior said.
Those fires can give firefighters less time to react to sudden changes in wind direction, said Larry Hood, a fire behavior analyst with the U.S. Forest Service. Unlike brush or trees, the dead grass that carpets the Central Valley after spring also responds to even the slightest drop in humidity.
“With those light, airy fuels, the fire behavior can change in a second,” Hood said.
This week's hot, dry north wind, gusting to 40 mph, turns the grass to tinder and can send embers sailing far ahead of the main fire. Flames, even in grass just a foot tall, can reach 4 to 6 feet high.
The extreme fire danger is expected to last through today, with temperatures hitting 100 degrees throughout the Central Valley. Winds, however, are expected to diminish.
That would be a relief to families who have been evacuated ahead of a 3,500-acre fire in Butte County near Chico, about 90 miles north of Sacramento.
Conditions improved from Tuesday, when wildfires damaged dozens of homes and thousands of acres across Northern California. Flames destroyed 32 homes in Stockton, 50 miles south of Sacramento, and 21 homes in Palermo, about 60 miles north of the state capital.
Other blazes were burning on the Fort Hunter Liggett Army training center in southern Monterey County and near the coast in Monterey and Sonoma counties.
Also yesterday, firefighters had contained dozens of smaller fires.
The state yesterday activated contracts with private companies to use DC-10 and DC-7 air tankers. Seven air tankers and eight helicopters were dumping water and fire retardant on flare-ups.
