A wildfire raging north of San Francisco destroyed another 162 homes over the weekend, putting the number of homes destroyed at 1,050 and making it the fourth worst wildfire in the state’s history, California fire officials said. The Valley Fire has burned at least 75,100 acres in Lake, Napa and Sonoma Counties since it started last Saturday around 1:25 p.m.in the Cobb area of unincorporated Lake County.
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More than 1,000 people who were forced to evacuate from areas of Northern California affected by a deadly wildfire will be allowed to return home on Sunday, a day after a new fire broke out further south and killed one person, officials said.
Another 535 homes were destroyed by a separate blaze that killed at least two people and that has burned 285 square kilometres in the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 274 kilometres southeast. Those wildfires still threaten several thousand other homes, officials said.
Residents of Hidden Valley Lake, Jerusalem Grade, Grange Road, and Butts Canyon Road will be allowed to return to their homes starting at noon Sunday, Cal Fire said. That blaze was 72 percent contained Sunday.
Both fires have also burned hundreds of barns, garages and other structures. Even though it continued to threaten thousands of structures, all evacuation orders were lifted.
There were more than 4,375 firefighters assigned to the Valley Fire as of this morning. That fire has been blamed for two deaths.
A sawyer climbs a hillside while cutting down trees that burned in the Valley Fire in Middletown, California, September 15, 2015.
But “some of these areas were very remote and to get all the crews and equipment in that’s needed to clean it up, it’s hard “, Lake County Sheriff’s Lt. Norm Taylor, told the station.
The fire is burning in Amador and Calaveras counties.
CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant said those two residents killed had chosen to remain in their homes after evacuations were put in place.
That makes it essential that the smoldering remains of the two giant blazes be dealt with as quickly and thoroughly as possible, Scott Mclean, a battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said.
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Four years of exceptional drought in California in particular have provided a lot of dry tinder for the flames.
