worldUpdated: Aug 23, 2020 05:52 ISTFirefighters in California were racing to slow the spread of wildfires that burned nearly one million acres in a week and destroyed hundreds of homes as weekend weather threatened to spark new fires and overwhelm the state’s firefighting ability. Two clusters of wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area broke old records to become the second- and third-largest wildfires in recent state history by size. Since thousands of lightning strikes began on Aug. 15, the state responded to 585 wildfires that have burned nearly a million acres, or 1,562 square miles (4,046 square kilometers), according to CalFire. The bulk of damage was from three clusters of fire “complexes” that were ravaging forest and rural areas in the San Francisco Bay Area and wine country north of San Francisco. The third one was burning in the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the coast of San Mateo County, south of San Francisco.

Source: Hindustan Times August 23, 2020 00:22 UTC