The fires have killed at least five people, destroyed more than 500 structures and scorched hundreds of square miles. More than 60,000 people were under evacuation orders Friday morning as firefighters hoped to use a break in the extreme heat to try to make progress against the raging blazes.
Authorities ordered the evacuation of the UC Santa Cruz campus late Thursday. Scotts Valley, a hub of Santa Cruz County's tech industry, was also ordered to evacuate, with some residents heading to the Santa Cruz boardwalk for refuge.
More than 18,000 students are enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, although it is unclear how many were on campus or in Santa Cruz before the evacuation order. The university is working with local hotels to find rooms for students.
The fire also seriously damaged Big Basin Redwoods State Park, northeast of Santa Cruz, prompting a conservation group on Thursday to openly mourn the loss of California's oldest state park.
"We are devastated to report that Big Basin, as we have known it, loved it, and cherished it for generations, is gone," said the Sempervirens Fund in a statement. "Early reports are that the wildfire has consumed much of the park's historic facilities. We do not yet know the fate of the park's grandest old trees."
California's Department of and Recreation confirmed in a news release that the park "sustained extensive damage" Tuesday from the CZU August Lightning Complex fire and would be closed until further notice.
In all, more than 694,000 acres have burned in Northern and Central California — the equivalent of 1,085 square miles, or more than twice the size of the city of Los Angeles.
So many fires burned in the numerous low mountain ranges surrounding the San Francisco Bay that the region was home to the world's worst air quality Wednesday night and Thursday morning, according to the website PurpleAir.
At least 539 structures have been destroyed, and the fire-fanning weather conditions that have brought record temperatures and thousands of lightning strikes in the past few days are not expected to abate soon.
One major cluster of fires is in wine country. The LNU Lightning Complex fire has blackened a combined 215,000 acres, destroyed 480 structures and triggered the evacuation of nonessential personnel from Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and patients from Adventist Health St. Helena hospital in Napa County. It was 0% contained.
"Extreme fire behavior with short- and long-range spotting [is] continuing to challenge firefighting efforts," officials wrote in an update Thursday morning. "Fires continue to make runs in multiple directions ... impacting multiple communities."
There have been fatalities — including four civilian deaths tied to the LNU Lightning Complex fire and a pilot who was killed when his firefighting helicopter crashed in Fresno County on Wednesday, briefly sparking another brush fire.
On Thursday, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection announced the death of a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. employee who was found in his vehicle in the Gates Canyon area outside Vacaville., where crews were working. Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant later said that the employee's death was determined to be unrelated to the fires, so it is not included in the agency's fatality count.
From the Salinas Valley to wine country, thousands fled to shelters and hotels. In the Sonoma County town of Healdsburg, under an evacuation warning, residents prepared to leave, some for the third time in four years.
Harvest Echols said Thursday that she's tired of running from fires, tired of packing up her kids, tired of her wine country town that seems to come close to burning every year.
"I want to move," she said. "There are lots of more relaxing places to live."
Times staff writers Luke Money and Leila Miller contributed to this report.
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