This year’s fire season pales in comparison to blazes in 2017 and 2018 that ranks as California’s deadliest and most destructive.
The tally of more than 400 structures damaged or destroyed in the Kincade fire also represents over half the property losses from all California wildfires this year, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. Although weeks remain of a fire season that now effectively runs through December, the 2019 tally of a quarter-million acres burned falls far short of the 1.2 million acres and 1.6 million acres that went up in flames in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Thousands of homes were destroyed.
Those conditions gave way to the onset of heavy blasts of dry, gale-force winds blowing in from desert areas in October, the traditional peak of fire season.