Flames swallowed dozens of homes and other structures early Wednesday as the fast-moving LNU Lightning Complex fire raced toward Vacaville from the northwest, prompting frantic evacuations and rescues and ensuring that California’s latest wildfire season will be another catastrophic one.
It was one of several lightning-sparked fires that intensified overnight and threatened communities in and around the Bay Area.
Fire officials in Vacaville ordered evacuations for all residents of Pleasants Valley Road and all connecting streets and English Hills Road as walls of fire surged across roadways. The Solano County Sheriff’s Department ordered evacuations for residents west of Blue Ridge Road to I-505 in Vacaville and north of Cherry Glen Road to Highway 128.
The Vacaville Fire District said at 5:41 a.m. that the fire had entered Gibson Canyon, and that all of Solar Hills and Gibson Canyon Road area are under evacuation.
Emergency radio dispatches suggested firefighters were rescuing victims, including some with burns.
The I-80 freeway remained open, though the fire was inching down the hillside toward it shortly after 6 a.m. The air was thick with smoke and clumps of ash just west of Vacaville, where the fire is beginning to encroach.
Many evacuees fled with only their nightclothes, forced to rush from their homes with only minutes to spare.
Jerry Shirar, 74, gathered with a handful of evacuees and media crews on a small patch of land near an orchard on Peña Adobe Road, east of the freeway. A neighbor alerted him to the fire’s danger around 11 p.m. Tuesday, Shirar said. He stepped outside to survey the scene and saw Mount Vaca ablaze.
“It started at the top of the mountain and worked its way down. It was three-quarters of the way down when I left,” he said. If the fire has overtaken Mix Canyon Road, where Shirar lives, “I assume I don’t have a house left,” he said.
Others huddled near the orchard said they were starved for new information about the fire. A main source of local information — the KUIC 95 radio station — had been knocked off the air for at least three hours, evacuees said.
A complete accounting of the damage done so far in the region as of Wednesday morning wasn’t available, but multiple homes on Pleasants Valley Road were totally destroyed by the fire — barely two hours after evacuations were ordered.
Torched gas lines exploded at one house totally engulfed in flames on Pleasants Valley Road.
“We could see the glow up in the hills” shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday, said Boyd Clegg who owns 10-acre farm off English Hills Road, northwest of Vacaville. He watched with trepidation as flames licked over his field: People’s homes lay just behind the thick curtain of smoke.
“It’s always scary, whether it’s your home or you’re trying to save somebody else’s,” Clegg said.
At the corner of Wykoff Drive and Foothill Drive, just down the street from her home, Wendy Merrill, 87, clasped her hands together as if in prayer.
“Thank God,” she said. “it’s been terrifying. But our house is OK.”
The fire tore through a large open acreage behind their home, consuming a barn and forcing her, her husband and two friends who had evacuated their home to flee at the request of firefighters.
“I hope I never have to go through anything like this again,” she said.
Merrill, who swims laps for exercise, said she planned to head to a nearby outdoor pool this morning.
“I’m hoping the pool will be open,” she said, “because I need it.”
Houses on fire at #Vacaville fire off Pleasants Valley Road. No firefighters able to handle #LightningComplex pic.twitter.com/izsnXrziTc
— Matthias Gafni (@mgafni) August 19, 2020
The LNU Complex is a cluster of 20 lightning-sparked blazes burning in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties that firefighters are struggling to contain.
As of Wednesday, the complex had burned around 85,000 acres and was 5% contained.
News crews on the scene said police officers and firefighters were racing door to door in the outskirts of Vacaville Wednesday morning to alert people to the fire racing toward them.
It was extremely warm in Vacaville on Wednesday morning, after the National Weather Service had predicted overnight temperatures would barely dip below 80. The forecast called for highs in the 90s in the area, nearing 100, every day through at least next Tuesday.
Outside the Vacaville Senior Center, one of the city’s evacuation areas, ash fell like snow among the flowered trees. Evacuees, calling friends, tried to find out about their homes.
“We don’t have a lot of information here,” said Leonard Miller, an American Red Cross volunteer at the center.
“Just a lot of rumors,” Miller said the center had about 80 evacuees early in the morning but the number decreased as some areas reopened to residents. Evacuees were required to have their temperatures checked, answer questions about their health and COVID-19 exposure and wear face masks. The evacuation center provided masks and sanitizer as well as the usual snacks, water and coffee and blankets.
Another dangerous wildfire was spreading Wednesday morning in and around the Santa Cruz Mountains, along the Pacific coast.
The CZU August Lightning Complex, a collection of 22 lightning-caused fires in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, was pushing southeast toward the community of Bonny Doon, which is home to a few thousand people. It was also 0% contained as of Wednesday morning.
Cal Fire Spokesman Jonathan Cox said the complex intensified overnight and had blackened more than 10,000 acres, prompted the evacuations of 22,000 people and burned down an untold number of structures. Cal Fire’s unit chief for the two counties, Ian Larkin, said the firefight was being complicated by a lack of resources, as crews are stretched thin across the state in the aftermath of the lightning storm.
“We’ve been working diligently to try to, with the resources we have, contain these fires,” Larking said, “and have had little success at this time due to the (dryness) of our fuels that are burning, the terrain that we’re fighting the fires in (which) is very steep and difficult, and the sheer lack of resources available.”
He said the inability to call in more help “hampered our efforts significantly,” with the teams on hand struggling to deal with “long-range spotting” — embers being blown by heavy winds ahead of the main conflagration and then sparking new spot fires.
“Right now we are in the position (where) we have no resources to put out on the line today, so we’ll be double-shifting all of our resources that are currently on the line,” Larking said. “This is a significant safety hazard for our firefighters that are out there as well as the communities that we’re out there trying to protect.”
Many of the wildfires were caused by the extreme heat wave accompanied by unusual thunderstorms, leading to lightning touching down hundreds of times in the North Bay — all while the ongoing pandemic has complicated efforts to shelter displaced residents.
A fire that started near Guerneville on Tuesday, dubbed the 13-4 Fire, forced evacuations along a 50-mile stretch of coastal land, ranging from Bodega Bay to north of Sea Ranch and well inland.
Mandatory evacuations — or warnings that evacuations may be imminent — were also put in place for parts of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Napa counties. In Marin County, a fire started at Point Reyes National Seashore on Tuesday night, sending smoke south along the coast into San Francisco.
Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to the two dozen-plus fires across the state Tuesday afternoon by declaring a state of emergency, allowing California to receive mutual aid from other states and secure federal grants.
Chronicle staff writer Jill Tucker and metro editor Demian Bulwa contributed to this report.
Dominic Fracassa, Michael Cabanatuan and Matthias Gaffni are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com, mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com, matthias.gafni@sfchronicle Twitter: @dominicfracassa @ctuan @mgafni
