The six lightning-sparked Santa Clara Complex fires that raged
last week from Livermore to Highway 152 at Bell Station in southern
Santa Clara County are either out or contained, and many California
Department of Forestry firefighters have gone north to fight a rash
of small fires started Wednesday. Once again, lightning was the
culprit.
The six lightning-sparked Santa Clara Complex fires that raged last week from Livermore to Highway 152 at Bell Station in southern Santa Clara County are either out or contained, and many California Department of Forestry firefighters have gone north to fight a rash of small fires started Wednesday.
Once again, lightning was the culprit.
“California has just been inundated with lightning this year,” CDF Fire Specialist Chris Morgan said Thursday. “I grew up in this area, have lived in the west all my life, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. This is the third sequence this year.”
Morgan said monsoon moisture coming up from the south has created interesting weather conditions. But the additional moisture may aid the firefighters working the northern fires.
“It’s in their favor that the humidity is up,” he said. “There was even some rain associated with the system in some of the northern areas.”
CDF rushed approximately 4,000 firefighters Wednesday to Lake, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Shasta, Trinity, Tehama and Glenn counties. Fire officials were stretched so thin that 37 fires in areas the state monitors could not be staffed, department spokeswoman Karen Terrill said.
The lightning caused between 150-250 fires, some of which are already out, Morgan said. Some have scorched as many as 3,000 acres, and some homes in the area have burned. Many of the fires are in areas that Morgan calls “high fire potential” areas, with lots of dry brush and steep terrain.
The Santa Clara Complex fires were declared contained Tuesday at 8 p.m.
The fires cost more than $8 million to contain, and there are still firefighters working on the largest of the six fires, the Annie fire. But the majority of the crews are elsewhere.
“Most everyone is gone from the incident bases,” Morgan said Thursday. “They broke camp in Christmas Hill Park (in Gilroy), and people are packing up things, making needed repairs on engines and shipping out. Some of them have been diverted up north.”
