The Mendocino Complex fire continued to grow Monday, becoming the largest wildfire in recorded California history.
The enormous blaze, the product of two fires that merged, has scorched 283,800 acres — about seven times the size of Manhattan — in Mendocino, Lake and Colusa counties, about 100 miles north of San Francisco. While the fire is just 30% contained, it is now moving toward largely uninhabited, rugged terrain. At least 75 homes have been burned, and it still threatens nearly 10,000 structures, though no one has been killed.
“We broke the record,” Scott McLean, a deputy chief with Cal Fire, told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s one of those records you don’t want to see.” McLean said the fire was still “extremely fast, extremely aggressive, extremely dangerous.”
This is the second straight year that California has marked its largest-ever wildfire — last year’s Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties held the previous record at 281,000 acres. Four of the five largest fires in state history have occurred since 2012.
“We’re looking at long-term trends that are alarming for us, especially how quickly they are burning and how much damage they are causing and how deadly they are,” Cal Fire battalion chief Jonathan Cox told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It would not be an overstatement to say this is unprecedented.”
More than 14,000 firefighters are battling at least 16 wildfires across the drought-ravaged state, and nine people have died. Elsewhere, the Carr fire near Redding, which has burned more than 1,000 homes and resulted in seven deaths, was 47% contained. The Ferguson fire, near Yosemite National Park was 39% contained, and officials said much of the park would be closed indefinitely to visitors.
