(TNS) - Nearly three years after a swarm of Wine Country wildfires devastated California, another explosion of flames is making clear that the state’s efforts to fight the crisis may be no match for the worsening conditions fueling it.

Flames leveled entire Santa Rosa neighborhoods in 2017, then destroyed almost all of the Butte County town of Paradise 13 months later. Each of those fires set records for destruction.

In the past week, the extent and complexity of the blazes have stretched California’s firefighting resources to the limit. Over a few days, fires ignited by lightning in an intense heat wave torched an area more than twice the size of Los Angeles, forcing 119,000 people to flee in the middle of a pandemic. 

And it’s only August. The most dangerous fire-prone months are still to come.

“The hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier — climate change is real,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said, recording a cell phone video Thursday from a forest outside Watsonville, as flames encroached nearby.

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