Thousands of firefighters, battling the wildfires in California, made small progress on Monday with potentially dangerous lighting storms proving milder than expected and temperatures easing. The fires have destroyed more than 100 homes and other structures and are threatening 100,000 more buildings, officials said.  

Governor Gavin Newsom said some 625 fires were burning throughout the state and had scorched more than 1.2 million acres — nearly the size of the Grand Canyon. Around 17 of those 625 fires are considered major, including LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex, Newsom said. The LNU and SCU Lightning Complex, comprise several fires each and have become two of the largest blazes in the state’s history as far as acreage burned.

The LNU Lightning Complex which erupted north of San Francisco on August 8 was 22% contained Monday afternoon while the SCU Lightning Complex, which also erupted on August 8, was contained by 10% early in on Monday.

Another major fire, the CZU Lightning Complex, has burned through areas closer to the coast. The fires have for the most part been sparked by so-called dry lightning strikes in the central and northern parts of the state.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows an overview of the SCU Lightning Complex wildfires, Saturday, Aug. 22, 2020, in California. 

“We are essentially living in a mega-fire era,” said Jake Hess, a unit chief in Santa Clara for state firefighting agency Cal Fire. He said that the agency is working for California fires for the last five years and these fires are huge since they have started.

Hess said the fires have become larger and more dangerous every year and warned that firefighters had to pace themselves to get “to the end of this marathon.”

Some 14,000 overstretched and exhausted firefighters – some from other states or even Canada and Australia — have been struggling to contain the flames. The staggering scale of the fires, coming this early during fire season which normally runs from August to November, is unprecedented.

The fires have posed an added challenge to the state as it battles to contain the COVID-19 pandemic which has left many parts of California still on lockdown.