Fire Danger on the Rise This Week as Crews Battle Multiple Blazes in California

Updated at 3:20 p.m.

As multiple blazes burn across California, the Bay Area is facing increased fire risk this week, the National Weather Service warned Monday.

Meteorologist Rick Canepa said inland parts of Northern California — where grass and brush have dried out in the summer heat — will be particularly vulnerable amid low humidity and winds up to 40 mph during the afternoon and evening hours through Friday.

“We’ll be watching the parameters closely,” he said, especially in interior counties that are far from the typical reach of the San Francisco Bay’s marine layer. “The East Bay hills, down across the southern interior, areas farther inland into Napa County [and] northernmost Sonoma County [are] far removed from any coastal influence so that the conditions have dried out.”

In inland Lake County, just north of Napa and Sonoma, an “erratic” blaze broke out Sunday afternoon, spreading rapidly through dry brush and grass for multiple hours before firefighters halted forward progress just after 6 p.m.

The Lake Fire grew to 400 acres, prompting evacuation orders for more than 3,380 people who reside there. Those orders were downgraded to warnings on Sunday night, and by Monday morning, all evacuation warnings were lifted. The blaze is 40% contained.

One structure was destroyed. One firefighter was taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries, according to Cal Fire’s Sonoma–Lake–Napa unit.

“Day shift operations will continue focusing on strengthening the established control lines, mopping up the interior of the fire, mitigating any hazards on the site and providing for both public and emergency personnel safety at all times,” the agency wrote on social media on Monday morning.

Farther south, in similarly dry San Luis Obispo County, the Gifford Fire has taken a firmer hold. Over the weekend, the blaze grew out of multiple smaller wildfires that sparked Friday afternoon along Highway 166.

The fire has so far spanned southern Santa Barbara and northern San Luis Obispo counties. As of Monday morning, it was still spreading north and south.

Los Padres National Forest spokesperson Flemming Bertelsen said that the southern direction is a multiple-front fire and has entered the San Rafael Wilderness — one of the first wilderness areas in the country to gain federal preservation protections.

The area’s status makes firefighting more difficult, Bertelsen said, in part because it prohibits crews from using certain tools, like specialized bulldozers and chainsaws, without federal permission.

“We were doing our best to try to keep it out of the wilderness,” Bertelsen said. “Once the fire gets established in pretty much any wilderness area, it’s significantly more challenging to stop due to the lack of roads and trails and fuel breaks.”

The topography on the northern front of the fire is slightly more forgiving, Bertelsen said, and to the northeast, the blaze has already run into an area that burned in a separate, fully contained wildfire. He said firefighters are focused on ensuring flames don’t reach another wilderness area, the Machesna Mountain Wilderness, farther north.

Because of the steep, sloping terrain and critically dry brush and other fuels in the area, Bertelsen said it’s likely that tall columns of smoke and gases will form within the fire throughout the day.

“Just imagine lighting a match, turning it upside down and observing how much faster it burns and how much more aggressively it burns,” he said. “When you have everything coming into alignment — the steep slopes, continuous fuels, the wind and then the solar radiation — it kind of sets things up to burn aggressively.”

While Monday’s weather is supposed to be slightly more favorable for fire suppression, Bertelsen said, “We’re still a long ways off from hooking around these flaming fronts and buttoning them up to the point where we can say we’re approaching containment.”

So far, there have been three fire-related injuries. One person driving a car along Highway 166 shortly after the blaze began Friday was burned, and two others were injured while conducting a utility check in the area. Bertelsen said those two injuries were not a direct result of flames or fire smoke.

More than 180 people have been evacuated and an additional 225 are under evacuation warnings.

According to Bertelsen, there are ranches and residential pockets just on the perimeter of the fire that could be at risk as the fire progresses.

One building, a historical cabin, has been destroyed.

Live fuel moistures — or the moisture level of materials that commonly catch fire, like grasses, brush and trees — are “below critical” in Central California, making it extremely easy for fire to catch, Bertelsen said.

“[If] you were to drop 10 embers out there, nine of them would ignite force fuels and spread,” he told KQED.

The dry, hot and windy conditions there are similar to those forecast in the Bay Area this week, increasing fire risk here.

According to weather service meteorologist Canepa, the marine layer causing San Francisco’s particularly foggy summer hasn’t usually extended into the interior counties. Since July is the driest month of the year on average, many of these places are nearing their peak fire risk.

Combined with a warming trend through the week, fire risk looks to be at its highest on Wednesday and Thursday. In the month ahead, the weather service is predicting that the Bay Area will shift into a stronger high-pressure system, which could lead to a more prolonged period of warm to hot weather.