Name: California fires: more than 1.4 million hectares burned - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-10-25T18:50:11.000Z
Duration: 4 min 16 s
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Now I want to update you on the wildfires in California.

They burned through more than 1.4 million hectares this year that far exceeds any other year in the state's history.

These are pictures from Deer Park in the Napa Valley wine region in northern California.

This particular fires, burned through 4000 hectares of land and hot, gusty winds are forecast.

We've had a new increasing the winds, along with increasing temperature and lowering relative humidities, which has increased the fire behavior and the fire has jumped and is working its way towards those more populated areas.

Well, there are three fires which have merged near Santa Rosa.

That's led to mandatory evacuation orders in Napa and Sonoma counties, and this is what that looks like from above.

Thousands of hectares have been burned in.

This videos from the Napa County Sheriff's Office.

Never wait till the last second to evacuate.

Hundreds of residents have taken that advice and left.

Others, though, have stayed to try and defend their homes.

We got a long hose out here trying to keep it wet and hope we don't end up like the poor guy right across the street there.

The whole house just went up in flames about five minutes ago.

These pictures show us just what that looks like.

This was captured by the photographer Ken Porter for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

This was one of many homes destroyed in this area.

The after six years of this, where we're getting used to intense.

That's every summer is kind of like this.

That gets a little bit worse every time on the stage.

The situation was at when you were filming.

Is anyone trying to save those buildings or they've seen they've been written off.

There were two strike teams of engines there, but the fire moves so fast up the hill that it impacted the structures.

And, you know, these were big, these big homes, you know, 2500 square feet, 3000 square feet.

And there they're kind of on a ledge of a you know, kind of a canyon and eso they're really difficult to put out.

And when they get going, the winds were up around 50 miles an hour, and they impacted that.

The house is pretty pretty routinely, and they're so close together that they just took off and there was not much they could dio.

They save a lot of homes on the other side of the block because there was these big ever cast going on.

So they did it an amazing job, but unfortunately, they lost.

I think they lost anywhere from 10 to 11 structures on on that street.

And, Ken, when you're taking these photos, how easy is it to move around to navigate from one situation to another?

Uh, you know, you're you're wearing all the gear that the firefighters were wearing.

Three only thing that you don't have is the hose and the tools.

Uh, but you have, you know, the fire shelters, the no max, the helmets, the shrouds, the boots, the gloves, Um, and, you know, So it's kind of you feel a little sort of like the mummy when you when you run around in that stuff, but you get used to it.

So but you kind of get you know, we have such a good law in California four or 9.5, that allows us access into these into these disasters to show people what's going on when they've been when they've been evacuated.

So it's actually pretty easy to move around.

One person who hadn't taken the advice to evacuate.

Did you manage to speak to people who are who were doing that?

No, you know, there's always people that want to stay put and they tend to, you know, want to put out the fire themselves.

And I'll tell you what you know, when you when you see the videos or the pictures that I that I photographed last night and you see how big the flames are, then you realize that a garden hose is not gonna do much good.

It's just not gonna do much good when there's a 50 mile an hour wind on a fire.

 It was so hot that you know, you would burn yourself if you didn't have the correct gear on many things you can do look up his work online. 