Freak Lightning
Storm Sparks 840-Plus Fires in California
Update 7/5/08:
More than 800 square miles Since a series of dry lightning strikes ignited more than 1,500 wildfires across central and Northern California on June 21, more than 814 square miles of trees,
grass and brush has gone up in flames.
This Fire from Heaven Came
Just Days After California Began Allowing Same Sex Marriage Ceremonies
If you are traveling to California within the next few days, try to be flexible with some of your travel plans--particularly if you were planning to visit the local forests or some of the national parks:
SAN FRANCISCO - Firefighters from
neighboring states arrived to help Monday after an "unprecedented"
lightning storm sparked more than 800 wildfires, from Big Sur to wine country to
Humboldt County.
Thousands of firefighters battled the blazes on the ground and from the air and
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was alarmed by the number of fires that kept
erupting.
He said he was told late Sunday evening that the state had 520 fires, and he found it "quite shocking" that by morning the number had risen above 700. Moments later, a top state fire official standing at Schwarzenegger's side offered a grim update: The figure was actually 842 fires, said Del Walters, assistant regional chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but a couple were in the northern part of the state.
"This is an unprecedented lightning storm in California, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes," Walters said. "We are finding fires all the time."
Some of the largest fires are just about 30 miles east of Sacramento, about 20 miles south of Monterey and Carmel, and in the northern part of the state near Humboldt, which is home to the Redwood National Park. It is estimated that over 100 of the fires are raging with no firefighters attacking them at all, simply because there are too many fires to fight them all.
Fortunately, none of the fires are raging terribly close to any of the major metropolitan areas.