now i want to update you on the
wildfires in california they've burned
through more than 1.4
million hectares this year that far
exceeds any other year in the state's
history
these are pictures from deer park in the
napa valley wine region in northern
california
this particular fire has burnt through 4
000 hectares of land
and hot gusty winds are forecast here's
more from the authorities
we've had an increase in the winds along
with
increasing temperature and lowering
relative humidities
which has increased the fire behavior
and the fire has jumped
and is working its way towards those
more populated areas
well there are three fires which have
merged near santa rosa that's led to
mandatory evacuation orders in napa and
sonoma counties
and this is what that looks like from
above thousands of hectares have been
burned and the fires are still
out of control in many cases this video
is from the napa county
sheriff's office it came with the
caption never wait till the last
second to evacuate hundreds of residents
have taken that advice and left
others though have stayed to try and
defend their homes
this is one of them that's that's what
i'm doing we got a long hose out here uh
trying to keep it wet
and uh hopefully don't end up like the
poor guy right across the street there
the whole
house just went up in flames about five
minutes ago
and these pictures show us just what
that looks like this was captured by the
photographer kent porter for the santa
rosa press democrat
this was one of many homes destroyed in
this area and i spoke to kent earlier
you know it was a little intense last
night uh the
the after six years of this we're
getting used to intense that's
every summer is kind of like this it
gets a little bit worse every time
and at the stage the the situation was
at when you were filming there is anyone
trying to save those buildings or
they've been
they've been written off oh yeah no the
the
the firefighters were there there were
two strike teams of of engines there
but the fire moved so fast up the hill
that it impacted the structures and you
you know these are big these are big
homes you know 2 500
square feet 3 000 square feet and
they're they're kind of on a ledge of a
you know kind of a canyon and uh so
they're really difficult to put out and
when they get going the winds were up
around 50 miles an hour and they
impacted
the houses pretty pretty routinely and
they're so close together
that they just took off and there was
not much they could do they they did a
great job they saved a lot of homes on
the other side of the block
uh because there was these big ember
casts going on so they did an
amazing job but unfortunately they lost
i think they lost anywhere from 10 to 11
structures on on
that street and ken when you're taking
these photos how
easy is it to move around to navigate
from one situation to another
uh you know you're you're wearing all
the gear that the firefighters are
wearing uh the only thing you don't have
is the hose and the the tools
uh but you have uh you know the fire
shelters the
the nomex the helmets the shrouds the
boots the gloves
um and you know so it's kind of you feel
sort of like the mummy when you when you
run around on that stuff but you get
used to it so
but you kind of get you know we have
such a good law in california 409.5
that allows us access into these into
these disasters to show people what's
going on when they've been
when they've been evacuated so it's
actually pretty easy to move around it's
a little dangerous during a fire it was
pretty dangerous last night actually
yeah look it looks that way i played a
clip just now one person who
hadn't taken the advice to evacuate did
you manage to speak to people who were
who were doing that it was staying put
no you know there's always people that
want to stay put and they they
they tend to you know want to put out
the fire themselves and
i'll tell you what you know when you
when you see the videos or the pictures
that i that i photographed last night
and you see how big the flames are then
you realize that
a garden hose is not going to do much
good it's just not going to do much good
when there's a 50 mile an hour wind on a
fire just didn't
you know it was so hot it was it was so
hot that you know
you would burn yourself if you didn't
have the correct gear on
many thanks to kenton do look up his
work online
you