Pilot killed as wildfires and thunderstorms engulf California amid sweltering heatwave

Around 367 individual fires have been started by the thunderstorms: Getty Images
Around 367 individual fires have been started by the thunderstorms: Getty Images

A pilot was killed after lightning strikes sparked hundreds of wildfires in California amid the heaviest spate of thunderstorms the state has witnessed in a decade and a sweltering heatwave.

Some 11,000 lightning strikes have been recorded in a 72-hour period this week, starting new blazes and exacerbating some existing fires that have been tearing through the Golden State for days.

Around 367 individual fires have been started by the thunderstorms; almost two dozen of those have grown into major conflagrations, authorities said.

Scores of homes have been burnt while thousands have been forced to flee.

The fires have come during a week in which California has experienced one of its most severe heatwaves in years, causing power blackouts and widespread disruption.

On Sunday, the mercury potentially hit 130F (54.4C) in California’s Death Valley National Park – a temperature that could become the hottest ever recorded on Earth.

The pilot, who has not yet been named, was killed after the helicopter they had been flying crashed while on a water-dropping mission in Fresno County, about 160 miles south of San Francisco, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said.

Multiple fires raced through hills and mountains adjacent to Northern California’s drought-parched wine country, shutting down Interstate 80 at Fairfield, about 35 miles (56 km) southwest of Sacramento, as flames leapt across the highway, trapping motorists caught in a hectic evacuation.

Police in the nearby town of Vacaville reported that advancing flames had prompted the evacuation of a state prison there and a medical facility for inmates.

Four residents whose communities were overrun by flames hours earlier in the same area suffered burns but survived, though the severity of their injuries was not immediately known, said Will Powers, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

He said thousands of residents were under mandatory evacuation orders in a four-county area stricken by a cluster of nine wind-driven fires collectively dubbed the LNU Complex, triggered by lightning on Monday.

As of Wednesday night, the LNU complex of fires had burned largely unchecked across 124,000 acres (50,000 hectares), with zero containment, destroying at least 105 homes and other structures and leaving another 70 damaged, CalFire said. Several of the fires had merged by nightfall.

Wearing a singed nightgown, Diane Bustos said her husband abandoned their car as it caught fire and then blew up on the west side of Vacaville early Wednesday morning. She lost both her shoes when she and her family ran for their lives.

“I made it, God saved me,” Ms Bustos told television station KPIX.

"We are experiencing fires the like of which we haven’t seen in many, many years,” California Governor Gavin Newsom told a news conference, adding he had requested 375 fire engines from out of state to help.

He declared a statewide fire emergency on Tuesday.

The last time California experienced dry lightning storms of such devastating proportions was in 2008, said CalFire spokesman Scott Maclean.

Fanned by “red-flag” high winds, the fires are racing through vegetation parched by a record-breaking heatwave that began on Friday. Meteorologists have said the extreme heat and lightning storms were both linked to the same atmospheric weather pattern – an enormous high-pressure area hovering over America’s desert Southwest.

The largest group of fires, called the SCU Lightning Complex, had scorched at least 102,000 acres some 20 miles east of Palo Alto, while a third cluster, the CZU August Lightning Complex, grew to more than 10,000 acres and forced evacuations around 13 miles south of Palo Alto.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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