Cover Story: Fires, smoke rule the day (and night)

A reality of life in California during the summer and fall is wildfire, and residents throughout the Bay Area have been living through a stark reminder early in this year’s fire season.

A series of August thunderstorms — an unusual occurrence in Northern California — awed with remarkable visuals especially overnight Aug. 15-16, but brought with them lightning strikes, often in dry conditions, that ignited hundreds of fires in arid wildland over the course of a week.

As of Wednesday, there had been nearly 14,000 lightning strikes causing more than 700 new wildfires statewide that burned over 1.32 million acres (collectively, larger than the entire state of Delaware) with seven fatalities reported and nearly 1,700 structures destroyed, according to Cal Fire.

After the first week of burning in primarily hot and windy conditions, fire crews began to make more significant headway in battling many of the wildfires earlier this week when potentially dangerous weather forecasts instead turned in their favor starting on Monday.

“Continued favorable weather conditions continue to aid firefighters in their efforts towards containment,” Daniel Berlant, assist deputy director for Cal Fire, said in his daily statewide update on Wednesday morning.

“As firefighters continue to make good progress towards containment on all the fires, and thanks to the efforts of firefighters, two fires have been fully contained,” he added.

Weather conditions including a marine layer that arrived Wednesday were forecast to remain positive for a couple of days, helping the firefighting effort and improving the poor air quality dominated by wildfire smoke.

But Berlant cautioned that firefighters and residents should prepare if conditions turn in the other direction this weekend.

“Warmer conditions are expected over the weekend. Isolated thunderstorms are still possible in the upper portion of Northern California and the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The rest of California will experience a return to a warm and dry weather pattern,” he said.

As a result, Berlant urged people to stay alert and be prepared for a possible evacuation should it ever be needed.

SCU Lightning Complex

Wildfires in and around the Bay Area include the so-called SCU Lightning Complex fires (named after the Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit, in whose area the fires are raging).

Originally a collection of 20 separate vegetation fires caused by lightning strikes Aug. 16 mainly in Alameda and Santa Clara counties, the SCU Lightning Complex would see its two largest fires merge south of Sunol last weekend before the weather conditions improved.

Burning primarily in rural and rugged terrain, the fire complex has threatened thousands of homes and resulted in evacuation orders and warnings in five counties, including a sweeping evacuation warning for parts of rural unincorporated Alameda County in the far south and east Tri-Valley.

The evacuation warning areas never reached the incorporated cities of Pleasanton or Livermore, and none of the local areas had fallen under evacuation order as of Wednesday evening.

Thus far, the damage in the rural Tri-Valley has been less than other parts of the region.

“On one side of this, it is truly sad that during the pandemic we are now dealing with another emergency. Fortunate, for my district, aside from the extremely poor air quality we are experiencing, we have had zero properties damaged by the enormous fires,” Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty told the Weekly on Tuesday.

“That is remarkable and brings me to the other side of this, and that is despite these fires, I am proud of the work that our public safety workers have done. They acted quickly, efficiently and collaboratively to assist in an effort that should not and will not go unnoticed,” said Haggerty, whose District 1 includes most of the land in Alameda County affected by the fires.

All told, the SCU Lightning Complex had charred 367,371 acres as of Wednesday evening in mainly rural vegetative land in parts of Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced and San Benito counties, according to Cal Fire.

Containment, which was difficult to come by during the first week, had increased to 30% as of Wednesday evening.

“Fire activity has lessened due to favorable weather conditions and increased humidity across the complex,” Cal Fire officials stated Wednesday morning. “During the evening fire crews held existing control line around the fire perimeter, continuing to both reinforce and add new containment lines.”

“When weather and conditions are favorable, there will be a controlled burn operation inside the control line. This controlled burn will widen the buffer and consume fuel between the edge of the fire and the control line. If residents see large columns of smoke, it most likely will be from the controlled burn,” they added.

As of Wednesday evening, the evacuation warning for rural unincorporated Tri-Valley to the south and east still remained in effect due to potential fire danger.

The warning applied generally south of Interstate 580 and east of Highway 84. It excluded the cities of Pleasanton and Livermore, as well as some more-populated unincorporated areas such as Happy Valley and anything west of I-680 such as Castlewood. (Check fire.ca.gov for the latest evacuation map.)

“The evacuation warning is for the rural areas south and east of Livermore, particularly those with livestock that will take more time and effort to relocate. In areas like that it is critically important to maintain ‘defensible space’ around buildings,” Livermore Mayor John Marchand told the Weekly.

He noted that the while the warning had not applied to anywhere within the Livermore city limits to date, the city’s emergency operations team would continue tracking weather and fire conditions.

“The (team) has specifically trained for events like this. Our public safety and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) personnel are working in person and remotely, day and night to keep everyone safe in our community,” Marchand said.

Cal Fire has set up its SCU Lightning Complex incident command center in Pleasanton, where the Alameda County Fairgrounds opened its doors to the state agency. The fairgrounds has also been accepting evacuated livestock and horses into its barns.

Several dozen Pleasanton residents greeted firefighters with signs and words of encouragement from afar in a show of appreciation outside the fairgrounds on Tuesday morning.

More than 1,900 emergency personnel were assigned to the SCU Lightning Complex, and equipment included 233 fire engines, 42 dozers, 41 water tenders and seven helicopters — plus 23 hand crews.

No fatalities had been reported as of Wednesday evening, but there were three first-responder injuries and two civilian injuries. Twenty buildings and 17 minor structures were destroyed, and six other structures were damaged. Another 20,065 structures remained under threat.

“In what are already trying times, in a time where are all our resources are stretched very thin across the county and in this state, we have asked for even more from our public safety workers, and they responded,” Haggerty said. “Due to their efforts lives have been saved, structures have been protected and many animals, essential to farming in East County, will live on.”

The two largest fires within the complex — the Canyon and Reservoir fires south of Sunol — merged last weekend and expanded into Merced and San Benito counties, according to Cal Fire. The merged fires represented 360,668 acres and 15% contained as of Wednesday morning.

The Deer Zone fires in Contra Costa County that headed east from the northeastern face of Mount Diablo were fully under control at 3,104 acres as of Wednesday.

Smoky skies

Smoke and poor air quality has enveloped the Tri-Valley and most of the Bay Area for nearly two weeks due to the SCU Lightning Complex and other lightning-induced wildfires raging elsewhere including Solano, Sonoma, Napa and Santa Cruz counties.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District extended its Spare the Air Alert through at least today due to smoky conditions, which not only filled the sky outside but saw many residents seal doors and windows to keep the ever-present smoke from coming inside their homes.

“The air quality impacts of these wildfires burning throughout Northern California are a testimony to the ongoing harmful impacts of climate change,” said Jack Broadbent, executive officer of the district. “It’s important for us all to continue to be vigilant and stay indoors as smoke continues to impact the region.”

Among the smoke impacts, the Alameda County Fairgrounds canceled or rescheduled multiple public events including drive-in concerts like Subtronics with Calcium and Level Up (now Sept. 12) and Sublime with Rome (now Oct 2. and Oct. 3), while the cities and Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare were forced to close their COVID-19 regional testing center at the fairgrounds on multiple days due to the poor air quality.

Smoky conditions are even more problematic considering the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Wildfire smoke can irritate your lungs, cause inflammation, affect your immune system and make you more prone to lung infections, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that cause COVID-19,” according to the CDC.

“Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, preparing for wildfires might be a little different this year. Know how wildfire smoke can affect you and your loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic and what you can do to protect yourselves,” the CDC stated.

For more information, visit www.cdc.gov, www.sparetheair.org, www.cdph.ca.gov or www.readyforwildfire.org.

Wildfire action plan checklist

Create an evacuation plan

* Designate an emergency meeting location outside the fire or hazard area. This is critical to determine who has safely evacuated from the affected area.

* Include several different escape routes from your home and community. Practice these often so everyone in your family is familiar in case of emergency.

* Have a plan for evacuating pets and large animals such as horses and other livestock.

* Develop a “Family Communication Plan” that designates an out-of-area friend or relative as a point of contact to act as a single source of communication among family members in case of separation.

In case of immediate evacuation, remember the six P’s

* People and pets

* Papers, phone numbers and important documents

* Prescriptions, vitamins and eyeglasses

* Pictures and irreplaceable memorabilia

* Personal computer hard drive and disks

* “Plastic” (credit cards, ATM cards) and cash

— Source: Cal Fire. To learn more, visit www.readyforwildfire.org.

Protecting your home from wildfire smoke

Barred from gyms, schools and sporting events by COVID-19 restrictions, then forced indoors by wildfires, Bay Area residents are coping with yet another health threat: smoke leaking into their homes.

Sealing windows and doors, cleaning the air with air purifiers or filters, creating indoor space closed to the outside and drinking lots of water are some of the strategies suggested by authorities including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These precautions are all the more important with wildfire smoke causing elevated levels of particulate pollution that could leak indoors.

The first step to keeping polluted air out is to block it from seeping in through windows and doors, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The district recommends caulking windows and using weather-stripping under doors. Instructions can be found on sites such as YouTube.

It’s also possible to simply use paper towels held in place with painter’s tape. The latter material can be removed later without tearing off the paint.

People who have central air conditioning can use high-efficiency filters to capture fine particles from smoke, according to the CDC. If the system has a fresh air intake, it should be set to recirculate mode or the outdoor intake damper should be closed.

Portable air cleaners are good options, but not just any air purifier will do. For best results, the air cleaner should have a filter rated as “high efficiency” (high MERV) or HEPA, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Air purifiers should be non-ozone-generating.

Another option is to create a “clean room,” sealing off all windows and outside doors and cleaning the air in the room with a portable air purifier.

Staying hydrated by drinking plenty of water, and wearing an N95 mask (for adults) when outdoors can block the fine particulate matter in smoke.

— Bay City News Service