Five major wildfires, four sparked by lightning, are burning around the Bay, including three now raging in Napa County that have grown larger in size than the two East Bay fires that began on Sunday.
The Gamble Fire north of Lake Berryessa is now the largest of the bunch at 5,000 acres and 0% containment. The fire began near Berryessa Knoxville Road, west of the community of Brooks, on Monday morning due to a lightning strike. The fire appears to have grown rapidly overnight, overtaking the Hennessey Fire closer to St. Helena which began around the same time Monday morning.
The Hennessey Fire, meanwhile, grew from 750 acres Monday afternoon to 2,700 acres as of Tuesday morning. It is burning near Hennessey Ridge Road in the hills east of St. Helena, and east of Lake Hennessey.
Now a third fire, possibly sparked from embers from one of the other fires (though the cause has not yet been listed) has been named as of Tuesday morning, and has reportedly scorched 5,000 acres already. As CalFire tells us, that is now being called the 15-10 Fire, and it burning near Putah Creek Bridge and Berryessa Knoxville Road, north of the Hennessey Fire.
"Crews have responded to 59 additional fires [since] yesterday," CalFire says in the incident report. "Crews have been working hard to manage these fires while dealing with rugged terrain, adverse weather conditions, and unfavorable fire behavior."
Not all of those fires grew large enough to get names, but now the 15-10 Fire has. None of the fires have reached any level of containment.
The two fires that began due to early Sunday morning lightning strikes in the East Bay continue burning, and have now been subsumed into a larger complex of fires.
The Deer Zone Fires east of Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County and the Marsh Fire on the Alameda-Santa Clara County border have now been lumped into what's being called the SCU Lightning Complex Fires. The Deer Zone Fires had burned 1,450 acres as of last night, and the Marsh Fire had burned nearly 1,800 acres, but now the entire complex of fires, along with the Calaveras Zone Fires straddling Santa Clara, Alameda and Stanislaus counties, encompass some 25,000 acres in total, though they are burning in distinct and far-flung areas of multiple counties.
As of this morning, this complex of fires is listed as 0% contained. Evacuation orders are in place for Welch Creek Road in Alameda County, and evacuation warnings have been issued for Kilkare Road and Mill Creek Road.
Photo: David McNew/Getty Images