Been destroyed or damaged. Firefighters are also making progress on the czu lightning complex fire burning in the santa cruz mountain. It is burned 80,000 acres in santa cruz and san mateo counties, but is now 19 contained. The fire has destroyed 538 homes and other structures, mostly in Santa Cruz County. The good news is there are no new evacuation warnings or orders. The gains made in containing the czu complex have officials feeling optimistic that they will be able to allow more people to return to their properties as early as next week. Jesse gary has details on that. He joins us live this afternoon from downtown felton. Reporter good afternoon. With containment growing by about 5 every couple of days, officials are now working to take the teeth out of this fire by burning potential fuel before it can go up in flames. Although it does make people nervous, introducing fire to the environment, especially from the outside, but you have the best people available doing that job. Repor
Heavy military vehicles arrived at the Sonoma County fairgrounds where they will be based. They have been on orders, some of them continuously since early this year with covid. Reporter a third of the citizen soldiers have been a major fires before but all have been trained in camp roberts before coming here. They come none too soon. This is a much welcomed asset, a valuable asset and resource to us here locally. It will be good to get them to work right away. Reporter the cal fire truly needs this help. Obviously the season is already very busy and so we fill the gaps that cal fire doesnt have with resources for reporter these trips will have a very handson approach to provide a wide variety of critical functions, including write up on the fire line. Our mission here is to help the cal fire inside command gain the fire fermenters and how to allocate resources, callout evacuations and key people on the front safe. Reporter other units already at the fires for the last several months or
Contained. 80,000 acres of burned there so far. Cal fire is expected to give an update on the ccu fire any moment now. We are monitoring the briefing and will update you with any new information a bit later in the newscast. In the meantime, progress made by cal fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains may allow for people to return to their homes by early next week. More on that from ktvus jesse gary. Backfiring like they call it is under very specific conditions. We dont just use it for whatever. It is not just a random action. It is a very planned event that we use for the fuel. We bring that fire line to a safe area. Reporter late wednesday, cal fire cruise intentionally lit fires in the missive and make a brush fire, burning portions of santa cruz and san mateo counties. Firefighters are testing the viability, doing multiple controlled burns in the area bounded by l soil road to the south and how low road to the north. We want to contain the fuels between the control line and the main fire
Coverage this morning including continue its mission leaning on the threat of more thunder and partnerships with rescue groups lightning as well that could and one essential business to last all week, kari . Keep adoptions going off site. We are transferring out were going to see it this longterm dogs here. Morning but the rest of the week is looking pretty hot. They are able to adopt out. We see whats happening now, the reporter at 6 00 well share surge of moisture is bringing in more about the unique program storms across the Central Valley and how you can participate in in the sierra. Our annual clear the shelters effort this year. Ill see you again tonight at 6 00. Thanks, chris. We are seeing some rain and back to our top story, the spotty showers moving through. Wildfires moving across the bay area. Next today in the bay we have our team of reporters with the very latest overnight. A little bit favorable more favorable and the possibility of reporter youve seen the lightning. Vid
Is 22 contained. Thats a very large size. Sadly at least five people have died in that fire. More than 5,000 homes have been cal fire has six Incident Management Teams that are destroyed. The scu lightning complex fire staffed on a rotational basis is one of the largest gro 347,0 yearround. All six cal fire Incident Management Teams have been and is 10 contained deployed statewide. It spans seven counties in addition to that our federal partners also have incident including contra costa county, ala media, santa clara, san management teams that have been deployed throughout california. So everyone is working actively joaquin and stanislaus. To put these fires out as and we want to get you caught up on the czu august lightning quickly as we can. Complex fire thats burning in i want to remind everyone its the san mateo, Santa Cruz County border area. August. Fire season lasts many months. And it has scorched 78,000 acres and typically weve had fires in and is 13 contained. October. We hav