California firefighters battle nearly 30 wildfires, extreme heat

LOS ANGELES — California firefighters battled destructive wildfires Monday as a lengthening heat wave roasted the state.

Thousands of homes were at risk and air quality deteriorated in areas affected by smoke.

The National Weather Service blanketed the state in warnings of excessive heat and high fire danger, including the threat from lightning strikes.

Nearly 30 fires were burning, many of them in rural or forest lands. Many were small but uncontained.

“We are all experiencing rather extraordinary conditions,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

Newsom expressed optimism that most of the smaller blazes would be suppressed relatively quickly.

In Nevada County in the Sierra Nevada, a fire erupted Monday in a canyon northwest of Nevada City and quickly spread. Nearly 4,000 people were under evacuation orders, authorities said.

#LoyaltonFire update: as of 6am, the fire is at 44,147 acres and 10% contained. Crews made good progress over night after a strong thunderstorm system moved over the fire area early in the evening. pic.twitter.com/Fx3Q0uNlwz

— Humboldt Toiyabe NF (@HumboldtToiyabe) August 18, 2020

Fire north of Reno

Near California’s northern border with Nevada, a fire ignited by lightning near the community of Loyalton was 10 percent contained after destroying five homes and a half-dozen other structures, Tahoe National Forest officials said. As of 6 a.m. Tuesday it had burned more than 44,000 acres.

It was burning through timber, sage and tall grass.

Across the state line, school officials in Reno postponed Monday’s scheduled reopening of classrooms.

“As a result of the Loyalton Fire and the deteriorating air quality, we have made the decision that we cannot safely reopen our school district for our students and staff,” Washoe County School District Superintendent Kristen McNeill said in a message to families and staff.

Joshua trees torched

To the south, a fire sparked by lightning over the weekend in a remote desert region charred more than 65 square miles of scrub brush and Joshua trees in the Mojave National Preserve. There was zero containment.

A national park ranger said the fire began with a lightning strike on Saturday near Cima Dome, a geologic formation in the park that rises 1,500 feet above the desert floor.

Vegetation includes a Joshua tree forest that National Park Service officials say is the largest and densest in the world. Joshua trees that burn will not regrow.

Evacuations near Bay

Several lightning-sparked fires prompted evacuation orders and warnings across the San Francisco Bay Area, including a fast-growing blaze to the north in rural Napa County. In the East Bay, crews protected canyon homes from flames churning through dry brush near Milpitas.

In the mountains and desert of northern Los Angeles County, the 6-day-old Lake Fire was 38 percent contained after scorching 29.7 square miles.

The blaze, which consumed thousands of acres of brush in its first few hours, had more moderate behavior by Sunday, but about 4,500 homes remained at risk, county Supervisor Kathryn said.

A dozen structures, including homes, have been destroyed there.

Unhealthy air quality

Smoke from the Lake Fire and smaller fires in mountains east and west of Los Angeles led regulators to declare unhealthy air quality for a wide area of suburbs. A blaze in mountains near Lake Piru in Ventura County sent up a towering plume visible for miles.

Elsewhere, the 6-square-mile River Fire south of Salinas in Monterey County was 10 percent surrounded after burning five buildings, including at least one home.

Authorities reported four people injured since it was ignited by lightning Sunday.

Rolling blackouts averted

Widespread blackouts to reduce pressure on the electric grid were averted Monday night after regulators warned earlier in the day that they would not have enough power to meet demand in the midst of a heat wave.

The California Independent System Operator lifted its emergency declaration shortly before 8 p.m. Monday, after the state’s power grid operator had warned that it expected to implement rotating outages that could have left millions of Californians in the dark for up to two hours.

California ISO would have ordered utilities to shed their power loads as demand for electricity to cool homes soared. The operator had said as many as 3.3 million homes and businesses would be affected but later reduced that to around a half-million before canceling the option.

Pleas for people to leave their air conditioners at higher temperatures and avoid using washing machines and other major appliances seemed to have worked.

“Thank you for conserving,” California ISO said in a tweet.