Full Coverage: California’s summer siege of wildfires

A rare “fire tornado” that barreled into Redding during the destructive Carr fire was responsible for killing a firefighter as he raced toward a neighborhood in flames, an investigation has found.

Tera Swick watched in horror as monster flames raced down a mountain Friday morning and toward her mother’s neighborhood.

Wind-swept wildfires raging. Homes incinerated. Families displaced. Lives lost.

Firefighters continued to make significant progress against the Holy fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest near Lake Elsinore, raising the fire’s containment to 41% on Sunday, officials said.

Ben Newburn faced a group of weary firefighters gathered a few mornings ago with one message: Safety before anything else.

Firefighters pounded the Holy fire by air Friday as the blaze continued to threaten thousands of Riverside County homes.

In an otherwise deserted part of Clearlake Oaks, which was under a mandatory evacuation order, Nicole Young sat on the porch of a triple-wide lakefront mobile home with a couple of other holdouts.

The Holy fire marched toward Lake Elsinore on Thursday afternoon, forcing a new round of evacuations as flames came perilously close to homes.

New mandatory evacuations were ordered for the Lake Elsinore area Thursday afternoon as the Holy fire continued burning closer to homes in Riverside County.

Just two days after President Trump issued an utterly uninformed tweet about the causes of the California wildfires, his ulterior motives began to come into focus.

The smoke creeping up from a steep hillside near this small community 27 miles south of Yosemite Valley was a sure sign a spot fire was burning, hidden beneath the tall pine trees.

Under a smoky haze, Larry Wiedey idled Tuesday in a parking lot outside a makeshift shelter at Mountain Vista Middle School in Lake County, where several fire refugees had set up cots and parked their cars.

The Mendocino Complex fire has burned its way into the history books as the biggest fire ever recorded in California.

It’s day 11 for Omar Estorga on the front lines of California’s firestorm.

Logging has long been among California’s most divisive environmental issues — and the controversy shows little chance of cooling as the Trump administration pushes new efforts to thin forests.

The Mendocino Complex fire is now the largest wildfire in modern California history, scorching more than 283,000 acres and frustrating firefighters as it continues to leap across natural and man-made barriers in Lake County.

Firefighters braced for another day of high temperatures as they continued to battle a 4,000-acre brush fire in the Cleveland National Forest that forced evacuations in two Orange County canyons.

Dramatic drone images released Monday offered a grim record of the devastation in Shasta County, where the Carr fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes.

No one would mistake President Trump for an expert on climate change or water policy, but a tweet he issued late Sunday about California’s wildfires deserves some sort of award for most glaring misstatements about those two issues in the smallest number of words.

The closures at Yosemite National Park, including Yosemite Valley, will continue indefinitely, as rampant wildfires scorch key areas near the park during what is typically the busiest camping season of the year, the park announced.

The massive Mendocino Complex fire jumped across at least four creeks, one major road and a fire line cut by a bulldozer in a single six-mile run this weekend toward Leesville, a tiny unincorporated way station in Colusa County.

The Mendocino Complex fire continued to grow at an alarming rate, burning more than 266,000 acres by Sunday morning and becoming the fourth-largest in California history.

A Pacific Gas & Electric Co. employee doing restoration work in Shasta County died Saturday, a company spokesman said.

A massive pair of fires burning on either side of Clear Lake, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, exploded to nearly 230,000 acres Saturday night, making the conflagration among the largest on record in California and the most pressing of 17 large wildfires across the state.

Scott Gediman was explaining how the poolside and patio of the Majestic Yosemite Hotel would usually be full of politicians, dignitaries and others lapping in its luxury when his eyes beheld a sight made possible by smoke and fire.

Winds kicked up in Northern California on Thursday night, bringing red flag conditions to areas where massive fires are already raging.

Behind River Ridge Terrace in Redding, where the monstrous Carr fire had destroyed homes, a team of 20 men used shovels to stab the charred earth.

As authorities sifted the rubble from the fire that burned more than 1,000 residences in Shasta County, they were startled by what they encountered.

Firefighters throughout the state were bracing for strengthening winds forecast this weekend that threaten to fan the flames of multiple Northern California wildfires, including the deadly Carr fire.

It was Thursday evening when the Carr fire barreled out of the foothills and took aim at this city, with hot winds launching embers well ahead of the main blaze and engulfing neighborhoods along bends in the Sacramento River.

As fire crews struggled to gain containment on more than a dozen wildfires raging across California on Wednesday, Gov.

New brush fires, including one threatening homes in El Dorado County, broke out Wednesday, further straining the efforts of overloaded firefighters who are trying to keep up.

This is the new normal: There are 17 serious wildfires burning throughout California, including one of the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s history.

The northern Sacramento Valley was well on its way to recording the hottest July on record when the Carr fire swept into town Thursday.

It’s exhausting, dangerous and seemingly endless labor: tracking down hot spots still smoldering in the sage and pine west of Redding, then ripping through thickets until axes and shovels turn over the bare earth needed to form a firebreak.

Californians are being forced to evacuate as wildfires burn around the state.

Authorities in Shasta County are looking for four people who remain missing after the deadly Carr fire swept through neighborhoods and destroyed hundreds of homes.

The neighborhood looked like a patch quilt of destruction.

Even though the Ferguson fire isn’t burning inside Yosemite National Park, it’s keeping popular parts of the park shut through Sunday.

There are 15 serious wildfires burning throughout California.

The death toll from the state’s wildfires continued to mount Sunday, with eight fatalities now reported from blazes burning in Shasta County and near Yosemite National Park.

A firefighter was killed Sunday morning battling the massive Ferguson fire near Yosemite National Park, marking the second firefighting death in Mariposa County and the eighth fire-related death as more than a dozen wildfires rage across the state.

Authorities on Monday were hoping that a slight break in the heat this week could help them gain control of a number of wildfires that have so far scorched more than 200,000 acres and killed eight people across California.

Firefighters battling a 13,100-acre wildfire in Riverside County continued to make steady progress Saturday against the stubborn blaze, which has forced the evacuation of thousands of residents in and around Idyllwild.

The fire that has devastated Shasta County has killed five people and destroyed more than 500 structures.

Patrick Reitz can’t say his isolated, mile-high community of Idyllwild was fully prepared for the Cranston fire, a blaze authorities say was caused by an arsonist and which continued to burn out of control Friday.

California’s grim year of fire destruction just got worse.

As firefighters continue to battle the destructive Carr fire, some captured on video the tornado-like flaming vortexes that have swept through the area.

The fire came out of the dry pines of the Trinity Mountains with such intense heat that it created its own wind pattern.

Redding seemed to be holding its collective breath Friday as night fell, with winds appearing relatively calm but a grainy, orange sky looming over the community’s western neighborhoods from the deadly and still expanding Carr fire.

Riverside County prosecutors announced Friday that they have charged a 32-year-old man with starting nine separate fires, including a wildfire that has burned more than 11,500 acres in Idyllwild and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents as it rages through the San Jacinto Mountains.

A destructive wildfire in Northern California nearly doubled in size by Friday afternoon, killing at least two people — including a city firefighter — and burning dozens of homes in Redding as residents ran for their lives.

Redding Police Chief Roger Moore spent Thursday evening evacuating his neighbors from their River Ridge homes.

Apart from the roar of a few generators keeping a handful of local businesses open, largely to serve firefighters but also residents who were waiting out evacuating, Friday morning was quiet in Idyllwild.

Andrew Moon was playing the drums with his church’s music group — the last song in the set — when their director interrupted them about 8 p.m.

As the Carr fire moved into Redding on Thursday night and began burning homes, the live news feed from KRCR-TV was a lifeline of information.

A suspected arson fire that erupted in the San Jacinto Mountains near Idyllwild continued to spread Thursday as a second, smaller fire ignited just miles away and required the diversion of some firefighting resources.

Just down from the Coffers’ Deer Foot Lane, smoke and ash lightly billowed off a few destroyed homes.

Joe Achtner was unloading tools from his truck about noon Wednesday when he noticed the sky above his Idyllwild home getting dark and flakes of ash falling around him.

A fast-moving fire swept toward the mountain community of Idyllwild on Wednesday, burning 4,700 acres and five residential structures while threatening hundreds of homes.

When a blistering heat wave struck the Southland earlier this month, the region’s electric grid was so overwhelmed that more than 100,000 customers in Los Angeles had at some point lost power.

The Ferguson fire continued its march toward Yosemite National Park this weekend, growing significantly to more than 32,000 acres and prompting the closure of some campgrounds and roads.

It’s taken about two weeks, but crews battling a wildfire west of Yosemite National Park have nearly completed defenses around those communities most at risk of burning, authorities say.

The Rim fire in 2013 brought devastation to a vast swath of Sierra Nevada forests west of Yosemite National Park.

Just days after the death of a Cal Fire bulldozer operator, two more firefighters have been injured while battling the Ferguson fire near Yosemite National Park, officials said.

A wildfire near Yosemite National Park that has claimed one life continued to grow overnight to 17,319 acres, burning through steep, rugged forest where patches of dead trees and brush have been gathering for decades, officials said.

The terrain surrounding Mariposa County’s deadly Ferguson fire is a virtual tinderbox primed for disaster, experts say.

Firefighters in Santa Barbara County continued mop-up operations Sunday morning after battling a wildfire that destroyed about 20 structures, prompting hundreds of evacuations in Goleta over the weekend amid a brutal heat wave.

When John Davis and his family fled their hillside home in Goleta, it was raining embers.

Firefighters on Saturday continued to battle a destructive fire that snaked through a hillside area of Goleta in Santa Barbara County, one of several blazes that destroyed homes amid a record-setting heat wave in Southern California.

Carrie Givens heard the ferocious winds pick up Friday night, went outside and saw the flames quickly approaching.

A record-setting heat wave sparked brush fires across Southern California that destroyed homes and forced thousands to evacuate from Santa Barbara to San Diego county.

Record heat sparked several destructive brush fires across Southern California that burned numerous homes in San Diego and Santa Barbara counties.

Goleta residents Carrie Givens, 63, and her husband, John, 67, lost their home of 25 years.

Record-breaking heat and gusty winds expected by the weekend will prime California’s brush-covered hills and valleys for fast-moving wildfires even as crews currently battle two large blazes in the northern half of the state.