California governor Gavin Newsom ordered a statewide state of emergency Tuesday, as at least 30 separate wildfires blaze uncontrolled throughout the state. In the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday thousands of people in the potential path of wildfire are under orders to evacuate their homes. In San Francisco, and other California cities, the skies are filled with smoke today.
"Throughout the state of California right now, we are stretched thin for crews" because of the fires, said Will Powers, a state fire spokesman, on Wednesday. "Air resources have been stretched thin throughout the whole state."
From the Associated Press:
As part of the same fire complex, thousands of homes and businesses were threatened in the wine-growing counties of Napa and Sonoma in an area devastated by a series of deadly blazes in the last three years. At least seven fires were grouped together as one of two major Lightning Fires in Northern California, a nod to their origins just a day earlier.
Powers said much of the fire was burning through rural areas with steep terrain, making it difficult to get crews in. (…) Blazes engulfed rural and forest areas near the San Francisco Bay Area, near Salinas in Monterey County, around Oroville Dam north of Sacramento, forested areas west of Silicon Valley, in remote Mendocino County and near the Nevada state line north of Lake Tahoe.
Several also were burning in northern coastline areas and in Southern California.
More at AP:
Crews stretched thin coping with California wildfires
