Thousands of people were told to evacuate in regions around the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday as wildfires blazed across the state amid a blistering heat wave now in its second week. Smoke blanketed San Francisco.
In all, Gov. Gavin Newsom said firefighters are battling 367 known wildfires across California, including 23 that are considered major fires. Of those 367 fires, “the prospect of that number going up is very real,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Lynnette Round told Reuters that “in the last 72 hours we’ve experienced an historic lightning siege with 10,849 strikes causing more than 367 new fires.”
Newsom declared a statewide emergency Tuesday, saying the blazes were “exacerbated by the effects of the historic West Coast heat wave and sustained high winds.”
“We are deploying every resource available to keep communities safe as California battles fires across the state during these extreme conditions,” Newsom said in a release.
Will Powers, a state fire spokesman, said “throughout the state of California right now, we are stretched thin for crews” because of the fires. “Air resources have been stretched thin throughout the whole state.”
Much of California is enduring a sweltering late summer heat wave that has broken several record highs in recent days, including a 130-degree reading Sunday in Death Valley, Weather.com said. The hot, dry conditions are expected to continue at least into the weekend.❐
