Lightning-sparked August Complex is the biggest fire in recorded California history
The August Complex fire in remote national forests southeast of Eureka is officially the largest wildfire in modern California history — and it’s still growing with relatively low containment.
The blaze, a cluster of several dozen merging fires that started during a thunderstorm in August, is among dozens of wildfires that have blanketed the state in recent weeks, burning a record 3 million acres so far during what has become an apocryphal month of rural wild land devastation and smoky skies over much of the Golden State.
With more than three months left in a record-setting fire season, California has now experienced three of the four largest wildfires its modern history.
The August Complex, burning in mainly uninhabited areas, had consumed 746,607 acres as of Friday morning, in Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Tehama and Trinity counties. As of Friday, it had burned 26 structures and caused one death. The fire is 25% contained.
The fire technically increase by 300,000 acres in the last day. However, that was due to state and federal fire officials reclassifying two nearby fires, the Elkhorn Fire and the Hopkins Fire on Friday as part of the overall August Complex. Officials said they had unified the command center for the three fires.
The previous record blaze was the 2018 Mendocino Complex that burned 459,000 acres mainly in Mendocino and Lake counties.
Two other ongoing fires are now in the top four in terms of acreage burned in modern state history:
The SCU Lightning Complex fire in Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and three other counties is now third all-time. It has burned more than 200 structures, according to Cal Fire. That fire is now largely diminished.
The LNU Lightning Complex, another fire set by lightning strikes, is the fourth-largest fire. That fire, which burned nearly 1,500 rural homes, mainly in the Vacaville area of Solano County, and in Napa County, also is largely under control.
A fourth ongoing fire, the North Complex in Butte County, is now the 9th-largest wildfire in state history. A branch of that blaze, commonly called the Bear Fire but renamed Thursday by Cal Fire as the “North Complex West Zone,” this week destroyed the rural community of Berry Creek above Lake Oroville, population 1,200, and has claimed at least three lives. It remains largely uncontrolled.
The August Complex fire complex continues to burn and grow, and is only 24% contained, the Forest Service said early Thursday. It’s burning sparsely populated areas in and near Mendocino National Forest. One firefighter has died working the August Fire — a volunteer who deployed from Texas, authorities said — and roughly two dozen structures have been destroyed.
More than 1,100 fire personnel remain assigned to the August Complex. A blaze of its record-breaking size would, in ideal conditions, invoke a much larger response in terms of personnel response, but California is grappling with an unprecedented fire season.
Dozens of major incidents spanning the state have stretched resources thin ever since a freak series of thunderstorms dropped thousands of lightning strikes in mid-August, mainly in the north half of the state.
Cal Fire said Wednesday more than 2.5 million acres had burned statewide through Tuesday; easily a record dating back three decades, when the agency began tracking that figure at the statewide level.
This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 9:11 AM.
