California residents have organized to put out flames themselves in a large swath of land burning south of San Francisco, defending their homes despite orders to evacuate and pleas by officials to get out of danger.

They are going in despite California’s firefighting agency repeatedly warning people that it’s not safe and actually illegal to go into evacuated areas, and they can hinder official efforts to stop the flames. The former head of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the effort near a cluster of wildfires around the city of Santa Cruz is larger and more organized than he recalls in previous blazes.

(TNS) - Firefighters, aided by calming weather and additional crews on the front lines, made significant progress Tuesday on three major Bay Area infernos that were sparked by lightning last week.

Some residents of Napa and Sonoma counties were allowed to return home following two days of favorable conditions that allowed firefighters to increase containment of the massive LNU Lightning Complex fires to 27%.

The LNU has burned 356,326 acres and is among a swarm of storm-triggered blazes that have charred more than 1.25 million acres statewide since Aug. 15, according to Daniel Berlant, a Cal Fire assistant deputy director.

(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.

(TNS) - Signs of a problem within California’s power system emerged a full day before the blackouts hit.

Trader Dov Quint sat in his basement outside Boulder, Colorado, scouring the state’s day-ahead power market for opportunities to profit from California’s heat wave. He saw something strange: Prices for electricity to be delivered the next day — the day of the blackouts — were nearing $1,000 a megawatt-hour, more than 26 times higher than last year’s average.

The last time that happened, in July 2018, the forecast for demand had been much higher. Something was amiss — were energy supplies lower than usual?

Thousands of people were under orders to evacuate in regions surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area on Aug. 19 as nearly 40 wildfires blazed across the state amid a blistering heat wave now in its second week.

Smoke blanketed the city of San Francisco.

Police and firefighters went door-to-door before dawn Wednesday in a frantic scramble to warn residents to evacuate as fire encroached on Vacaville, a city of about 100,000 that lies between San Francisco and Sacramento. Fire officials said at least 50 structures were destroyed and 50 were damaged and that four people were injured.

The number of California workers’ compensation claims for COVID-19 continues to climb, according to a new report compiled by the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

Data from the Division of Workers’ Compensation shows that as of Aug. 10, there were 9,515 claims reported for the month of July, bringing the total for the year to 31,612 claims, or 10.2% of all California job injury claims reported for accident year 2020. Those claims include 140 death claims, up from 66 reported as of July 6.

(TNS) - Before the coronavirus pandemic, Irene Teper worked full time as a primary care doctor seeing mostly healthy patients for their routine checkups or non-emergency care. That all changed in March.

“We have been going kind of nonstop since March,” said Teper, who works at MarinHealth in Novato. “There would be weeks where we would work on weekends as well. It’s literally nonstop.”

As the pandemic worsened, Teper was tapped by MarinHealth to establish an adult care clinic where doctors would treat patients showing COVID-19 symptoms. Now Teper is assisting her colleague, internal medicine doctor Elizabeth Lowe, with the mobile testing of the county’s most vulnerable residents in nursing homes and residential care centers where cases had spread rapidly in recent months.

California firefighters battled destructive wildfires Monday as a lengthening heat wave roasted the state.

Thousands of homes were at risk and air quality deteriorated in areas affected by smoke.

The National Weather Service blanketed the state in warnings of excessive heat and high fire danger, including the threat from lightning strikes.

(TNS) - A late-summer heat wave in Southern California typically sends people fleeing to movie theaters, shopping malls and crowded beaches in search of a cool respite.

But the coronavirus pandemic has forced the closure of places where people once gathered, upending those routines.

So as temperatures soared Friday, many people instead stayed at home with their air conditioners blasting. Even though many offices and businesses were closed due to the pandemic, that intense demand — along with other factors including a dearth of power coming in from other states — was enough to create the most serious statewide energy shortage in nearly 20 years, officials said. On Saturday night, another round of temporary blackouts was ordered in parts of the state.