California’s largest wildfire ever now 1 million acres, burning in 3 national forests
The August Complex, a gigantic lightning-sparked wildfire incident that started nearly two months ago at Mendocino National Forest and has flared in gusty winds since then, reached an incredible 1 million acres in size Monday morning.
The U.S. Forest Service, the lead agency for most of the fire zone, reported the fire at 1,002,097 acres as of a Monday morning incident update.
That acreage is equal to about 1,566 square miles. For comparison, the state of Rhode Island plus all of its immediately surrounding bays and rivers take up 1,545 square miles.
The complex is just 54% contained, meaning there’s only a fire line around a little more than half of its enormous perimeter. The Forest Service currently predicts it won’t be fully contained until mid-November.
The blaze is now burning in portions of Mendocino, Six Rivers and Shasta-Trinity national forests, the Forest Service says.
The Forest Service manages the fire’s South Zone and its North Zone — which has since been split up into two more zones, northeast and northwest. The North Zone has more than 2,600 firefighters assigned to it.
Cal Fire and the Forest Service are coordinating efforts on the 130,000-acre West Zone of the fire, which has 138 California National Guard among nearly 1,700 personnel fighting the fire, Cal Fire says. Resources remain stretched thin due to the quantity of fire incidents burning statewide.
Cal Fire in a Monday morning incident report for the West Zone said the fire “vigorously burned with wind-driven torching, spotting and fire runs” overnight. The West Zone is now 60% contained.
The vast majority of the fire zone is forested and sparsely populated, but dozens of structures have been destroyed and over 11,000 more remain threatened in the West Zone. Dozens of distinct evacuation orders are in place for towns and remote communities in Trinity and Mendocino counties, along with warnings in those two counties plus Humboldt. More detailed evacuation information is available from Cal Fire’s Mendocino unit and those counties’ sheriff’s offices.
Smoke from the August Complex has also been a major contributor to poor air quality throughout Northern California over various points in the past month and a half. Due to its sheer size and continued active fire activity, onshore and northwesterly winds have the potential to blanket most of the north half of the state with significant amounts of smoke, some of which has also converged with smoke from other large fires and fire complexes.
At over 1 million acres, the August Complex now makes up roughly one-quarter of the state’s record-setting 4 million acres burned to date in 2020, a milestone Cal Fire says California surpassed over the weekend.
The complex is the biggest fire in recorded state history, dating back to 1932, by a wide margin: No other California wildfire has ever burned 500,000 acres. Prior to the July 2018 Mendocino Complex, which ended up burning 459,000 acres, none had even reached 300,000 acres.
Climate change and California wildfires
Wildfires have always been part of life in California. The past four years have brought some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state’s modern history.
Nearly 180 people have lost their lives since 2017. More than 41,000 structures have been destroyed and nearly 7 million acres have burned. That’s roughly the size of Massachusetts.
So far this year, 30 people have died, according to Cal Fire.
Meanwhile, this year’s August was the hottest on record in California. A rare series of lightning storms sparked a series of fires, including the August Complex that has burned nearly 1 million acres, making it by far the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history.
The 2017 wildfire season occurred during the second-hottest year on record in California and included a devastating string of fires in October that killed 44 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 buildings in Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties.
The following year was the most destructive and deadliest for wildfires in the state’s history. It included the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, and the enormous Mendocino Complex.
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 10:41 AM with the headline "California’s largest wildfire ever now 1 million acres, burning in 3 national forests."
