California Fires Live Updates: Scores of homes burned in California and firefighting helicopter pilot has been killed in a crash
A firefighting helicopter pilot has been killed in a crash, and scores of homes burned in California on Wednesday as countless lightning-sparked blazes forced thousands of people to flee their dwellings.
Nearly 11,000 lightning strikes were documented during a 72-hour stretch this week at the heaviest spate of thunderstorms to hit California in more than a decade, igniting 367 individual fires. Nearly two dozen of these have grown into major conflagrations, police said.
Multiple fires raced through hills and mountains adjacent to Northern California's drought-parched wine country, shutting down Interstate 80 at Fairfield, about 35 miles (56 kilometers ) southwest of Sacramento, as flames leapt across the street, trapping drivers caught in a hectic evacuation.
Police in the nearby town of Vacaville reported that advancing flames had prompted the evacuation of a state prison and a medical facility for offenders.
Four taxpayers whose communities were overrun by flames hours before in precisely the same area suffered burns but survived, though the intensity of their injuries was not immediately known, said Will Powers a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
He explained thousands of taxpayers were under mandatory evacuation orders at a four-county area stricken by a bunch of nine wind-driven fires together dubbed the LNU Sophisticated, triggered by lightning on Monday.
In central California, a helicopter was on a water-dropping assignment in Fresno County about 160 miles (258 km) south of San Francisco when it crashed, killing the pilot, a private builder, CalFire explained.
As of Wednesday night, the LNU complex of fires had burned largely unchecked across 124,000 acres (50,000 hectares), with zero containment, destroying at least 105 houses and other structures and departing another 70 ruined, CalFire said. A number of the flames had merged by nightfall.
Wearing a singed nightgown, Diane Bustos said her husband abandoned their car because it caught fire and then blew up on the west of Vacaville early Wednesday morning. She lost both her sneakers when she and her family ran for their lives.
You will find social networking reports of people trapped in the blaze, but CalFire's Powers said authorities had no reports of anyone missing.
A Reuters reporter saw dozens of burned-out homesteads and homes in the Vacaville-Fairfield region, dead livestock one of torched possessions and a few critters wandering loose.
"We're experiencing flames the like of that we have not seen in many, many decades," California Governor Gavin Newsom told a news conference, adding he had asked 375 fire engines from out of country to provide help.
He announced that a statewide fire crisis on Tuesday.
The last time California experienced dry lightning storms of these devastating proportions was first in 2008, said CalFire spokesman Scott Maclean.
Fanned by"red-flag" high winds, the fires are rushing through vegetation parched with a record-breaking heat wave which began on Friday. Meteorologists have stated the intense heat and lightning storms were both linked to the same atmospheric weather pattern - an enormous high-pressure area hovering over America's desert Southwest.
The largest group of fires, known as the SCU Lightning Complex, had scorched at least 102,000 acres some 20 miles east of Palo Alto, while a third bunch, the CZU August Lightning Sophisticated, climbed to over 10,000 acres and forced evacuations approximately 13 miles south of Palo Alto.
Nearly 11,000 lightning strikes were documented during a 72-hour stretch this week at the heaviest spate of thunderstorms to hit California in more than a decade, igniting 367 individual fires. Nearly two dozen of these have grown into major conflagrations, police said.
Multiple fires raced through hills and mountains adjacent to Northern California's drought-parched wine country, shutting down Interstate 80 at Fairfield, about 35 miles (56 kilometers ) southwest of Sacramento, as flames leapt across the street, trapping drivers caught in a hectic evacuation.
Police in the nearby town of Vacaville reported that advancing flames had prompted the evacuation of a state prison and a medical facility for offenders.
Four taxpayers whose communities were overrun by flames hours before in precisely the same area suffered burns but survived, though the intensity of their injuries was not immediately known, said Will Powers a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
He explained thousands of taxpayers were under mandatory evacuation orders at a four-county area stricken by a bunch of nine wind-driven fires together dubbed the LNU Sophisticated, triggered by lightning on Monday.
In central California, a helicopter was on a water-dropping assignment in Fresno County about 160 miles (258 km) south of San Francisco when it crashed, killing the pilot, a private builder, CalFire explained.
As of Wednesday night, the LNU complex of fires had burned largely unchecked across 124,000 acres (50,000 hectares), with zero containment, destroying at least 105 houses and other structures and departing another 70 ruined, CalFire said. A number of the flames had merged by nightfall.
Wearing a singed nightgown, Diane Bustos said her husband abandoned their car because it caught fire and then blew up on the west of Vacaville early Wednesday morning. She lost both her sneakers when she and her family ran for their lives.
You will find social networking reports of people trapped in the blaze, but CalFire's Powers said authorities had no reports of anyone missing.
A Reuters reporter saw dozens of burned-out homesteads and homes in the Vacaville-Fairfield region, dead livestock one of torched possessions and a few critters wandering loose.
"We're experiencing flames the like of that we have not seen in many, many decades," California Governor Gavin Newsom told a news conference, adding he had asked 375 fire engines from out of country to provide help.
He announced that a statewide fire crisis on Tuesday.
The last time California experienced dry lightning storms of these devastating proportions was first in 2008, said CalFire spokesman Scott Maclean.
Fanned by"red-flag" high winds, the fires are rushing through vegetation parched with a record-breaking heat wave which began on Friday. Meteorologists have stated the intense heat and lightning storms were both linked to the same atmospheric weather pattern - an enormous high-pressure area hovering over America's desert Southwest.
The largest group of fires, known as the SCU Lightning Complex, had scorched at least 102,000 acres some 20 miles east of Palo Alto, while a third bunch, the CZU August Lightning Sophisticated, climbed to over 10,000 acres and forced evacuations approximately 13 miles south of Palo Alto.