Feeling abandoned by the state and federal government during an unparalleled conflagration of fires, volunteer firefighting units in two Santa Cruz Mountains towns have been forced to tap an alternative: unofficial help from an elite network of the nation’s finest emergency response units — who quickly provided needed equipment and support.
Over the weekend, crews from an elite FEMA Urban Search and Rescue unit in Menlo Park delivered spare water tenders, firefighting rigs, cots, sleeping bags, radios and communications equipment, food and water to struggling units in Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond. There, veteran and decorated first responders established makeshift command and operations centers to battle the CZU Lightning Complex fire raging in the mountains above Silicon Valley.
The unit is called California Task Force 3, and it is one of 28 such forces in the United States. The team of roughly 200 has responded to some of the nation’s most notorious and deadly disasters, including the 2018 Camp fire, the 2010 San Bruno gas line explosion, and notorious hurricanes such as Katrina, Irma and Harvey.
The death toll from the historic firestorms hitting Northern California rose to seven as officials used a small break in the weather to make progress against a series of lightning-sparked blazes that have been burning for a week.
Live Fire Updates from the New York Times
‘Megafires’ Could Burn for Weeks
There are 625 blazes burning across the state, and they have scorched an area larger than the state of Delaware.
Firefighters reported an increase in containment of the two largest groups of fires, the L.N.U. Lightning Complex and the S.C.U. Lightning Complex.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Firefighters make progress, but warn that ‘this is going to be a marathon.’
- The Bay Area is in a state of constant anxiety.
- Colorado, Montana and other Western states are also fighting fires.
- Schools are grappling with fires and coronavirus fears all at once.
- California’s redwoods can withstand fire, but another threat looms: climate change.
Firefighters make progress, but warn that ‘this is going to be a marathon.’
Strained by hundreds of fires that have burned through more than 1.4 million acres, California fire officials are warning that the state is now living through a “megafire era” in which blazes burn for weeks across vast expanses of land.
There are currently 625 blazes burning across the state, and they have scorched an area larger than the state of Delaware. Seven deaths have been linked to the fires and more than 1,000 homes and other buildings have gone up in flames, many of which were consumed by two groups of fires in Northern California — the S.C.U. Lightning Complex and the L.N.U. Lightning Complex — that are the second-largest and third-largest ever in the state.
“We are essentially living in a megafire era,” said Chief Jake Hess of the Santa Clara Unit of CalFire, California’s fire agency. “We have folks who have been working for CalFire for the last five years and that’s all they understand — megafires — since they started.”
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