The boilers, powered by either natural gas or diesel, produce steam that is then transported through a 71,540-foot distribution network to approximately 180 different buildings, providing heat for more than 37 million square feet of office space in the Tenderloin, Union Square, the Financial District and parts of SoMa.

According to a Department of Public Works newsletter, supply pipes carry steam from the network into radiators that heat San Francisco City Hall. When the loop opened in 1915, a power plant at Larkin and McAllister streets provided its energy until the mid-1990s.

Today, teams from the Bureau of Building and Street Repair handle the portion of the network beneath the four main streets surrounding City Hall: Grove, Larkin, McAllister and Polk Streets.

“We just feed it out of our system. We treat it like a service, like any other building,” Eurkus told The Standard.

Eurkus said about 95% of the network's steam comes from the 460 Jessie plant, using not only groundwater piped from the Powell BART station but also another source: “The other part is that we actually recycle condensation “After the buildings use the steam, some of it condenses, turns into water and is pumped back to the Cordia Energy Plant, he explained.

The oldest functioning parts of the network date back to 1913 and serve the use of several boiler systems. The Meacham Plant in the city's Tenderloin began operations in the 1960s, offering additional boilers to meet steam demand.

“Now, if there is a problem, 99% of the time we get a call from DPW or even the fire department, often because it's something that happened. If it’s abnormal, there’s too much steam coming out of the ground,” Eurkus said.

“We can respond within an hour and take care of it. In normal operation you'll see it burst and a little steam come out, but if it's an unusual situation where it's too much, and you know, then we'll get the call and we'll take care of it.”

The post Steam Rises From Some San Francisco Streets. Why? appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Photo by Grant MacHamer

If you've ever walked through downtown SF, especially along Market Street, you may have noticed clouds of steam rising from various vents and manholes. It turns out that this mysterious steam comes from a network of pipes has been heating up downtown SF for nearly a century.

Over 180 customersincluding SF City Hall, the Moscone Convention Center and the Golden Gate TheaterUse steam for space heating, water heating, air conditioning and other purposes.

Two huge cauldrons, located in SoMA And Lower Nob Hilllet the steam through 13 miles of underground pipes which form the steam cycle in the city center. This system is responsible for overheating 37 million square meters of commercial, residential and government buildings.

The company that operates this steam network, Cordia, serves a 2 square mile area in SF's central business district.

Courtesy of Cordia

Both steam generation plants use boilers heated by natural gas. The plant's combined heat and power (CHP) system generates 500 kW of electricity, This makes the system essentially energy self-sufficientsaid Cordia.

Critics of the system point out that the system also produces heat Almost a waste 250,000 gallons of water per dayaccording to a 2015 CBS Bay Area story.

Cordia addressed this problem by engaging in a water reclamation project Pump 30 million gallons of groundwater per year beneath Powell Street Station. The groundwater is purified and used in the boilers, reducing the need for municipal drinking water.

Not every drop of water in the steam circuit is wasted. Some of Cordia's 180 customers use some of the wastewater from their steam lines Landscaping and toilet flushingwhich includes SF City Hall.

The post Why Steam Rises From San Francisco Streets appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s office market has always been the brightest star in the Bay Area. Led by powerful tech and startup companies, rents have historically been high, and leasing remained strong. But the city’s prestige was upended after the pandemic hit. The metro has faced serious challenges in occupancy and leasing as workers switched to remote work and moved to lower-cost areas. Concerns around safety and quality of life in the city added to those troubles, prompting some companies to look elsewhere for space or commit to permanent remote work. The major shift is drawing attention to nearby Silicon Valley hub San Jose, which has been experiencing significant growth in office leasing, development, and population.

San Jose has also been known for its tech campuses and R&D (research and development) facilities, but for those looking for nightlife, culture, and anything else that city life has to offer, it’s hard to beat the atmosphere of San Francisco. But San Francisco’s much-publicized struggles with crime, affordability, and homelessness have reportedly led to residents leaving in droves, resulting in the nation’s highest office vacancy rates. So with so many leaving San Francisco, will San Jose’s development boom be enough to draw more tenants?

tech town

As the largest city in Silicon Valley, San Jose has a long history as a home to tech campuses. Companies like Netflix, Paypal, and Adobe all have major outposts in the town. But workers typically didn’t live in the decidedly more suburban area, with many commuting from San Francisco. Some tech firms tried making it even easier for their employees to get to campus, launching private shuttle buses to ferry them back and forth from San Francisco.

In 2011, looking to create more jobs, the city of San Jose adopted an ambitious plan, Envision San Jose 2040. The plan sets a roadmap for ramping up development and adding more density, housing, mixed-use developments, and walkability. Every year, the plan gets revisited and tweaked based on what else needs addressing. Building more housing, including affordable housing, is now a big part of that plan. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo set a goal in 2017 to have 25,000 new housing units in the pipeline by 2023. But the city still has a ways to go to meet that goal because, as of last summer, the city had only completed 3,348 housing units .

Recent data from Colliers shows that San Jose’s office sector is performing much better than San Francisco’s. Office vacancy in San Jose, according to the brokerage firm, is in the range of 9 to 10 percent, as opposed to San Francisco, which has a vacancy rate of around 20 percent and is twice as high as buildings in Santa Clara County and the Peninsula. Further showing its strength, a recent report named San Jose as the top metro area where Millennials want to move. At one luxury condo development in downtown San Jose, there is currently a 4,000-person waitlist for units at the forthcoming tower.

New developments in San Jose include Google’s 80-acre mixed-use project, which is anticipated to break ground by next year. Once built, the project will be the biggest development in San Jose’s history. Included in the campus will be 4,000 housing units, 1,000 of which will be designated affordable. Google has said that it expects up to 25,000 employees will work in the office. Facebook and Apple are also set to expand their footprint in Silicon Valley.

Last month, Caltrain announced new details for its plan to build a 1.2 million-square-foot mixed-use development next to the Diridon train station, where Google’s 80-acre campus is rising. The plans include two Class A office towers and ground-floor retail. That project could break ground by early 2024. One of the country’s largest office landlords, Boston Properties, is even restarting a development it had paused after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. That project, a pair of 16-story, interconnected office towers with more than 2 million square feet of office and retail, which was first proposed in 2018. “You don’t see, other than our San Jose project, us announcing major office developments at the moment,” said Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties .

Future plans

Robert Sammons, a senior director of research at Cushman & Wakefield, lives in San Francisco and takes the MUNI to the brokerage firm’s office in the Financial District. He said he’s seen things change in the city, especially in the struggling downtown business district., while other neighborhoods have bounced back from pandemic-related struggles more quickly, as more hybrid and remote workers spend time in their neighborhoods and help boost local retail businesses .

“In some cases, neighborhoods are doing better than they were pre-pandemic,” he said. A bright spot for the city has been a major uptick in tourism lately, something Sammons called “palpable,” which has also helped boost retail performance around Union Square, an area that had been experiencing a lot of turnover. But are workers back in the CBD? Not really. “The numbers are ticking higher, but they’re nowhere near where they were,” Sammons said. Salesforce, the city’s largest private employer, has cut down its office footprint three times since the start of the pandemic.

Like many other cities, the office market in San Francisco is experiencing a flight to quality. Class A buildings with the most popular amenities are experiencing the highest occupancy rates by far. “Tenants are flooding into top-quality buildings,” said Sammons. Among “Tier 1” buildings in the city, which Cushman & Wakefield classifies as the best of the best, overall vacancy is 4.2 percent. Meanwhile, the overall average vacancy rate in the city is around 21 percent. Sammons said buildings within the city’s central business district are performing better in general, while buildings further from the city center that may have been popular pre-pandemic are struggling to lease up. “Tenants want safety, security, convenience—any buildings that check those boxes,” he said.

So see

San Francisco has gotten plenty of criticism lately, and not just from political rivals taking aim at city leaders. Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam, who leads the largest industrial real estate firm in the country, was robbed last month while returning to his home in an upscale area of ​​San Francisco. In an interview after the incident, he called San Francisco “probably the most dysfunctional city in America.” Around the same time, tech executive Drew Oetting, president of the venture capital firm 8VC, which relocated to Austin, Texas from San Francisco, reportedly called San Francisco “the worst-run city in the United States,” during a conference.

Though the city is undoubtedly struggling with office occupancy and quality of life issues, officials have also been trying to revitalize the city and bring back pre-pandemic foot traffic to downtown areas. The Downtown San Francisco Partnership has launched the Public Realm Action Plan, a set of initiatives concocted by urban designers. The plan details how the city can use public and private spaces within a 43-block radius, bring back pedestrians, and restore character to the area that has been missing since the pandemic hit.

What really separates the two cities’ office markets are the physical and the not-so-physical: San Francisco is about software while San Jose and Silicon Valley are about hardware, said Sammons. The difference underscores why San Francisco’s office market has struggled more than San Jose’s. A massive amount of San Jose’s office market is dedicated to R&D space, where workers must be physically present to work on products—working from home isn’t an option. Meanwhile, 95 percent of commercial space in San Francisco is office space, much of which was occupied by startups and Silicon Valley companies that opened offices there over the last decade to appear workers who lived in the city and didn’t want to commute to Silicon Valley every day, according to Sammons. “Historically, the software market, that segment is the least desirable of coming back to the office,” he said.

However, there have been major office deals in “the city” lately, most notably with Google Cloud’s 300,000-square-foot lease in SoMa, where the company will take over payment processing company Stripe’s former headquarters. Late last year, Chime took 200,000 square feet in the heart of the city at 101 California St. “I think it will be successful in that they’re expanding rapid transit there, and BART is coming into San Jose over the next couple years, ” said Sammons of development in San Jose. “But they’re very different markets. San Jose is absolutely much more of a suburban market and San Francisco is San Francisco.”

San Francisco’s office market, while certainly challenged, does have bright spots—especially in the top tier segment of buildings. Tourism has come back, which is giving a much-needed boost to retail, and the city is taking steps to bring back pedestrians to once vibrant areas. If the city can address some of its issues, it could come back in a big way and restore its status as one of the most desired office markets in the country, but it may take some time. In the meantime, the plethora of new office and housing development in nearby San Jose and city officials’ ambitious plan to transform the city could be a model for other cities in the Bay area and around the country.

The post As San Francisco’s Workplace Market Struggles, San Jose’s Profile Rises appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s office market has always been the brightest star in the Bay Area. Led by powerful tech and startup companies, rents have historically been high, and leasing remained strong. But the city’s prestige was upended after the pandemic hit. The metro has faced serious challenges in occupancy and leasing as workers switched to remote work and moved to lower-cost areas. Concerns around safety and quality of life in the city added to those troubles, prompting some companies to look elsewhere for space or commit to permanent remote work. The major shift is drawing attention to nearby Silicon Valley hub San Jose, which has been experiencing significant growth in office leasing, development, and population.

San Jose has also been known for its tech campuses and R&D (research and development) facilities, but for those looking for nightlife, culture, and anything else that city life has to offer, it’s hard to beat the atmosphere of San Francisco. But San Francisco’s much-publicized struggles with crime, affordability, and homelessness have reportedly led to residents leaving in droves, resulting in the nation’s highest office vacancy rates. So with so many leaving San Francisco, will San Jose’s development boom be enough to draw more tenants?

tech town

As the largest city in Silicon Valley, San Jose has a long history as a home to tech campuses. Companies like Netflix, Paypal, and Adobe all have major outposts in the town. But workers typically didn’t live in the decidedly more suburban area, with many commuting from San Francisco. Some tech firms tried making it even easier for their employees to get to campus, launching private shuttle buses to ferry them back and forth from San Francisco.

In 2011, looking to create more jobs, the city of San Jose adopted an ambitious plan, Envision San Jose 2040. The plan sets a roadmap for ramping up development and adding more density, housing, mixed-use developments, and walkability. Every year, the plan gets revisited and tweaked based on what else needs addressing. Building more housing, including affordable housing, is now a big part of that plan. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo set a goal in 2017 to have 25,000 new housing units in the pipeline by 2023. But the city still has a ways to go to meet that goal because, as of last summer, the city had only completed 3,348 housing units .

Recent data from Colliers shows that San Jose’s office sector is performing much better than San Francisco’s. Office vacancy in San Jose, according to the brokerage firm, is in the range of 9 to 10 percent, as opposed to San Francisco, which has a vacancy rate of around 20 percent and is twice as high as buildings in Santa Clara County and the Peninsula. Further showing its strength, a recent report named San Jose as the top metro area where Millennials want to move. At one luxury condo development in downtown San Jose, there is currently a 4,000-person waitlist for units at the forthcoming tower.

New developments in San Jose include Google’s 80-acre mixed-use project, which is anticipated to break ground by next year. Once built, the project will be the biggest development in San Jose’s history. Included in the campus will be 4,000 housing units, 1,000 of which will be designated affordable. Google has said that it expects up to 25,000 employees will work in the office. Facebook and Apple are also set to expand their footprint in Silicon Valley.

Last month, Caltrain announced new details for its plan to build a 1.2 million-square-foot mixed-use development next to the Diridon train station, where Google’s 80-acre campus is rising. The plans include two Class A office towers and ground-floor retail. That project could break ground by early 2024. One of the country’s largest office landlords, Boston Properties, is even restarting a development it had paused after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. That project, a pair of 16-story, interconnected office towers with more than 2 million square feet of office and retail, which was first proposed in 2018. “You don’t see, other than our San Jose project, us announcing major office developments at the moment,” said Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties .

Future plans

Robert Sammons, a senior director of research at Cushman & Wakefield, lives in San Francisco and takes the MUNI to the brokerage firm’s office in the Financial District. He said he’s seen things change in the city, especially in the struggling downtown business district., while other neighborhoods have bounced back from pandemic-related struggles more quickly, as more hybrid and remote workers spend time in their neighborhoods and help boost local retail businesses .

“In some cases, neighborhoods are doing better than they were pre-pandemic,” he said. A bright spot for the city has been a major uptick in tourism lately, something Sammons called “palpable,” which has also helped boost retail performance around Union Square, an area that had been experiencing a lot of turnover. But are workers back in the CBD? Not really. “The numbers are ticking higher, but they’re nowhere near where they were,” Sammons said. Salesforce, the city’s largest private employer, has cut down its office footprint three times since the start of the pandemic.

Like many other cities, the office market in San Francisco is experiencing a flight to quality. Class A buildings with the most popular amenities are experiencing the highest occupancy rates by far. “Tenants are flooding into top-quality buildings,” said Sammons. Among “Tier 1” buildings in the city, which Cushman & Wakefield classifies as the best of the best, overall vacancy is 4.2 percent. Meanwhile, the overall average vacancy rate in the city is around 21 percent. Sammons said buildings within the city’s central business district are performing better in general, while buildings further from the city center that may have been popular pre-pandemic are struggling to lease up. “Tenants want safety, security, convenience—any buildings that check those boxes,” he said.

So see

San Francisco has gotten plenty of criticism lately, and not just from political rivals taking aim at city leaders. Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam, who leads the largest industrial real estate firm in the country, was robbed last month while returning to his home in an upscale area of ​​San Francisco. In an interview after the incident, he called San Francisco “probably the most dysfunctional city in America.” Around the same time, tech executive Drew Oetting, president of the venture capital firm 8VC, which relocated to Austin, Texas from San Francisco, reportedly called San Francisco “the worst-run city in the United States,” during a conference.

Though the city is undoubtedly struggling with office occupancy and quality of life issues, officials have also been trying to revitalize the city and bring back pre-pandemic foot traffic to downtown areas. The Downtown San Francisco Partnership has launched the Public Realm Action Plan, a set of initiatives concocted by urban designers. The plan details how the city can use public and private spaces within a 43-block radius, bring back pedestrians, and restore character to the area that has been missing since the pandemic hit.

What really separates the two cities’ office markets are the physical and the not-so-physical: San Francisco is about software while San Jose and Silicon Valley are about hardware, said Sammons. The difference underscores why San Francisco’s office market has struggled more than San Jose’s. A massive amount of San Jose’s office market is dedicated to R&D space, where workers must be physically present to work on products—working from home isn’t an option. Meanwhile, 95 percent of commercial space in San Francisco is office space, much of which was occupied by startups and Silicon Valley companies that opened offices there over the last decade to appear workers who lived in the city and didn’t want to commute to Silicon Valley every day, according to Sammons. “Historically, the software market, that segment is the least desirable of coming back to the office,” he said.

However, there have been major office deals in “the city” lately, most notably with Google Cloud’s 300,000-square-foot lease in SoMa, where the company will take over payment processing company Stripe’s former headquarters. Late last year, Chime took 200,000 square feet in the heart of the city at 101 California St. “I think it will be successful in that they’re expanding rapid transit there, and BART is coming into San Jose over the next couple years, ” said Sammons of development in San Jose. “But they’re very different markets. San Jose is absolutely much more of a suburban market and San Francisco is San Francisco.”

San Francisco’s office market, while certainly challenged, does have bright spots—especially in the top tier segment of buildings. Tourism has come back, which is giving a much-needed boost to retail, and the city is taking steps to bring back pedestrians to once vibrant areas. If the city can address some of its issues, it could come back in a big way and restore its status as one of the most desired office markets in the country, but it may take some time. In the meantime, the plethora of new office and housing development in nearby San Jose and city officials’ ambitious plan to transform the city could be a model for other cities in the Bay area and around the country.

The post As San Francisco’s Workplace Market Struggles, San Jose’s Profile Rises appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

© Bruce Damonte
La Fénix at 1950 offers 157 homes, including 40 units for formerly homeless families, in the Mission District of San Francisco.

New affordable housing for families has emerged in the Mission District of San Francisco.

La Fénix was founded in 1950 by the non-profit BRIDGE Housing and Mission Housing Development Corp. developed and converted a former site of the San Francisco Unified School District into 157 apartments and community ground floor space.

In the face of a housing crisis in the Bay Area at all income levels – especially for extremely low-income households – development in this vibrant Latin-born neighborhood offers the affordable housing needed, including 40 units for formerly homeless families.

San Francisco has seen a technology boom in the past decade, which has contributed to higher housing costs and gentrification, according to Smitha Seshadri, executive vice president of BRIDGE Housing.

“The Mission District became one of those places where rents became unaffordable for many working families and they were evicted,” she says. “And to see that we have some family homeless shelters in this building is going to be really impressive.”

La Fénix was completed in November 1950 and includes 155 units affordable for households earning between 45% and 60% of the region’s median income (AMI); two units are reserved for property management. The 40 units reserved for formerly homeless families account for less than 30% of the AMI, with the city providing grants through its local operating subsidy program.

“The most important thing is that we have 155 families,” says Sam Moss, General Manager of Mission Housing. “But it’s always very important to show that it’s not just about the people who live there, but really about the whole neighborhood.”

Moss says the ground floor will be activated for the community, with an art gallery and free studios for low-income artists, a youth-run bike repair shop, and space to run head start and early head start programs.

The crowning glory of the building, Seshadri adds, is the rooftop garden with open spaces, play equipment, and city skyline views that families can enjoy. The roof is also open to the public.

“We built the roof of a 10,000 square meter meeting room for church groups in the mission,” says Moss.

The non-profit developers were selected as part of a municipal tender to convert the vacant lot of the former Phoenix Continuation High School and a parking lot into affordable housing. The urban infill development is adjacent to the transit so no parking was required, which helped it with competitive funding from the state’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program – part of the state’s cap-and-trade auction program – Emissions of carbon emissions managed by – performing well by the Strategic Growth Council and implemented by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

Other funding partners for the $ 100 million development include Wells Fargo, a low-income investor and construction lender, California Community Reinvestment Corp. as permanent lender, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, BNY Mellon, the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

Swinerton Builders acted as general contractor, with David Baker Architects and Cervantes Design Associates as architects. On-site support services are provided by Mission Housing and Lutheran Social Services.

“Families have to take a deep breath – not just win the lottery to get a unit,” says Moss. “With Mission Housing as the landlord, you know that you are safe and will not be evicted.”

The post Blended-Use Growth Rises in San Francisco’s Mission District| Housing Finance Journal appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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BY BRAD BROOKS

Intermittent showers brought relief to flame-ravaged western Oregon on Friday, helping firefighters further suppress deadly flames that have ravaged much of the state and smothered its air with smoke for nearly two weeks.

Oregon was particularly hard hit by numerous wind-powered forest fires that broke out in the western United States earlier this month amid catastrophic thunderstorms, record-breaking heat and howling winds.

“We lost everything, but we’re going to start over,” said 73-year-old Bill Kesselring, pointing to the location of the log cabin he shared with his wife on the outskirts of Gates, Oregon, 80 miles south situated village in the Cascade Mountains that had stood by Portland.

The cabin and a garage with a beloved classic car that Kesselring had just restored were both reduced to charred rubble. Only the fireplace and chimney remained of the apartment.

“It breaks my heart. You work hard all your life and then you are hit by such a disaster,” he told Reuters.

Oregon’s poorly equipped firefighters were unused to the extent and size of the conflagrations and struggled for days to keep up with the flames before cooler, wetter, less windy weather settled in the area and reinforcements could arrive.

Another life lost in California

As of Thursday, officials in Oregon, Washington state and California said they were making steady strides in suppressing the fires. The joyous rains further brightened Oregon on Friday, although the fires rose the death toll to 35 in three states.

The U.S. Forest Service in California reported that a firefighter was killed Thursday in a fire that burned for nearly two weeks after being set by pyrotechnics at an outdoor gender reveal party east of Los Angeles.

Authorities have withheld identification of the fallen firefighter pending notification of family members, and details of the circumstances have not been released.

The death in the San Bernardino National Forest was the 26th fire-related death in California last month. These include two other firefighters – a forest service contractor who was killed in a lightning strike in the Mendocino National Forest and a private helicopter pilot whose helicopter crashed on a water drip mission in Fresno County last month.

Forest fires killed at least eight other people in Oregon and one in Washington state, all civilians.

In California alone, the flames have blackened a record 1.3 million hectares since mid-August. Another 650,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) have burned down in Oregon and Washington state since Labor Day.

Described by scientists and officials as unprecedented in scope and ferocity, the flames largely burned several small towns and thousands of homes.

“Beauty scar”

Thousands of evacuees, particularly in Oregon, remained huddled in shelters, mobile trailers, and hotel rooms. And Oregon emergency management officials have warned of the death toll that could rise if search teams search the ruins of houses that were on fire during the chaotic evacuations at the start of the disaster.

Justin Gaskill, 28, a U.S. Army veteran who ran a community watch organization that also organized food relief efforts, said residents were in the fire-ravaged town of Estacada, Oregon, where he was born and raised however, still in shock, decided to rebuild.

“I want to say that this event will leave our community with a beauty scar,” he said. “We were wounded, but there are so many beautiful opportunities to share and show our strength as a city.”

Thunderstorms brought sodden rain to the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains late Thursday and through Friday, helping a force of more than 6,000 firefighters advance against 10 large flames still burning in Oregon.

The heavy rains also triggered flood and landslide warnings in areas where the fire has stripped hills and vegetation canyons.

The cooler, more favorable weather in the area since last week has already dispelled some of the smoky, polluted air and softened the flames. So ground teams could go on the offensive with axes and bulldozers and use water-dropping helicopters and aircraft tankers at the same time.

Higher humidity also raised hopes of suppressing the flames in the greater San Francisco Bay area.

“Mild weather helps fight fires as crews gain ground in many major incidents,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Friday.

The post Showers deliver aid to fire-ravaged Oregon as loss of life toll rises in California appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The death toll from a massive fire that swept through the mountain communities of Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties has risen to 10, and 16 people remain missing, fire officials said Thursday evening.

The North Complex fire mushroomed in size this week, scorching a total of more than 252,000 acres and forcing some 20,000 residents in Plumas, Butte and Yuba counties from their homes. Officials said the bodies of seven more people were found Thursday as they searched through hamlets where the fire burned.

A hand crew was overrun by flames in the fire’s West Zone in Butte County, which had become extremely unpredictable due to erratic weather changes. The crew was able to escape, but two firefighters suffered minor injuries.

1/42

Lance Georgeson of Mammoth Lakes paddleboards on Tenaya Lake on Sept. 13 in Yosemite National Park. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

2/42

Thick smoke from multiple forest fires shrouds iconic El Capitan, right, and the walls of Yosemite Valley. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

3/42

Benjamin Lewis takes a photo for a group of San Diego firefighters in Yosemite. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A deer grazes in Cook’s Meadow as thick smoke shrouds the iconic landmarks of Yosemite Valley. 

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Thick smoke shrouds iconic Half Dome towering over Yosemite Valley in a view from Sentinel Bridge over the Merced River on Sept. 13. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Thick smoke shrouds Tenaya Lake on Sept. 13 in Yosemite National Park. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A Cal Fire truck passes a burned-out vehicle on Stringtown Road on Friday in Oroville, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Propane gas burns Friday at the ruins of a home on Zink Road in the Berry Creek area of Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

9/42

Melted goggles lie on the ground next to the burned-out truck on Stringtown Road. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

10/42

A crew from Trinity River Conservation Camp, a prison facility, does mop-up work on Stringtown Road on Friday, the day after a flare-up in the area. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

11/42

Scorched cars in Brush Creek, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter battles the Creek fire as it threatens homes in Madera County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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Flames from the Bear fire in Oroville, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A horse in a field in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Frank Martinez, left, and Rick Wolfe with their nine dogs in Oroville, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A fox pauses amid burned brush in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A statue is singed in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Lake Oroville in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighters work to save a home in Butte County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A burned truck in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter battles the Creek fire in Madera County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A plume rises from the Bear fire as it burns along Lake Oroville in Butte County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A table stands outside the destroyed Cressman’s General Store in Fresno County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A vehicle streaks by as Fresno County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeffery Shipman stands along California 168, with the Creek fire in the background on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The Laguna Hotshots Crew out of the Cleveland National Forest battles the Creek fire as it approaches the Southern California Edison Big Creek Hydroelectric Plant on Sept. 6 in Big Creek, Calif. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Members of the Laguna Hotshots Crew walk down Huntington Lake Road to battle the Creek fire on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A member of the Laguna Hotshots Crew is silhouetted against a background of flames. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The Creek fire burns along Huntington Lake Road on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A vehicle streaks along California 168 as the Creek fire creeps closer to Shaver Lake, Calif., on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A member of the Laguna Hotshots Crew battles the Creek fire on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter conducts a back-burn operation along California 168 as the Creek fire approaches the Shaver Lake Marina. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighter Ricardo Gomez sets a back burn amid the Creek fire near Shaver Lake Marina on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter works on the back-burn operation near Shaver Lake Marina. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A duck swims in Shaver Lake as the Creek fire approaches on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighter Ricardo Gomez battles the Creek fire with a back burn. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The sky glows orange around Shaver Lake on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter conducts a back-burn operation amid the Creek fire near Shaver Lake on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Flames leap into the sky as fire engulfs trees near Shaver Lake. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The Creek fire approaches the Shaver Lake Marina on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighter Ricardo Gomez sets a back burn amid the Creek fire near Shaver Lake Marina on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A man stands on a dock at the Shaver Lake Marina as the Creek fire approaches on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Flames consume dry brush around Santa Barbara firefighters as they set a backfire along Oro Quincy Highway in the aftermath of the Bear fire in Oroville. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The North Complex was one of the fires that exploded in size this week as record-high temperatures and strong winds beset the state. Flames raced through the northern Sierra Nevada foothills before dawn Wednesday — catching crews and residents off-guard as they leaped southwest toward towns in Butte County, including the community of Paradise, which was largely destroyed by the 2018 Camp fire.

Steve Kaufmann, a spokesman for the fire’s response team, said 2,000 structures have been destroyed or damaged, though that number may increase after crews further assess the area Friday.

So much smoke enveloped the region that it shaded the fire from the sun, reducing temperatures and increasing the humidity Thursday, according to an incident meteorologist. Though the smoke impedes firefighters’ aircraft response, it has helped with the firefight slightly. As of Thursday evening, the North Complex fire is 23% contained.

The incident is now the 10th-largest wildfire in state history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Wildfires have burned more than 3.1 million acres statewide this year — the largest amount on record. At least 19 people have died and thousands of structures have been destroyed.

Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said dangerously dry conditions led “to explosive fires that have really just skyrocketed us past the 3-million mark for the first time in our recorded history.”

“Unfortunately, with several more months of fire season to go, this number could continue to increase,” he said Thursday.

The Dolan fire, which ignited Aug. 18 north of Limekiln State Park in Monterey County, has also seen extreme growth this week. Officials said the combination of high temperatures, dry fuels and wind combined to more than triple the size of the fire, to more than 111,000 acres.

The fire also has spread to the Army’s Ft. Hunter Liggett, though that property has not been forced to evacuate, officials said.

Near the Oregon border, the Slater fire has grown to 120,000 acres since it ignited Monday in the Klamath National Forest. The fire is threatening the communities of O’Brien, Takilma, Cave Junction and Gasquet, and destroyed 150 structures in Happy Camp.

Embers fly across a roadway as the Bear fire burns in Oroville.

(Noah Berger/Associated Press)

While the mid-August lightning siege set California on the path toward a historic and horrifyingly active fire season, a second salvo of summer infernos has since pushed the toll to more devastating heights.

The unprecedented firestorm prompted the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday to temporarily close all national forests in California.

Many officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have said the effects of climate change have helped set the stage for this year’s prolific fire season.

“I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers,” he said Tuesday.

“You may not believe it intellectually,” he added. “But your own eyes, your own experiences, tell a different story.”

So far this year, almost 7,700 fires have ignited statewide, according to Berlant.

“This year has already been a very destructive fire season, and it is nowhere close to being over,” he said Wednesday.

Six of the state’s 20 largest wildfires have started in the past month or so, according to Cal Fire. That includes the August Complex, which has burned an all-time record 471,185 acres in a remote area in and around Tehama County.

The smoldering remains of a structure along Auberry Road, where the Creek fire tore through and jumped Highway 168 in Fresno County.

(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

That complex — which started Aug. 17 as a cluster of 37 distinct fires in the Mendocino National Forest — was 24% contained as of Thursday. The most recent acreage figure pushed it well past the 2018 Mendocino Complex fire, which burned more than 459,000 acres.

Crews have almost completely hemmed in the SCU Lightning and LNU Lightning complexes, which rank as the third- and fourth-largest wildfires in state history, at 396,624 and 363,220 acres, respectively.

The SCU complex — which began as a collection of about 20 blazes in Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties — is now 98% contained. Containment is at 95% for the LNU complex, which has charred parts of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Solano, Yolo and Colusa counties.

Joining those complexes on the distressing leaderboard is the Elkhorn fire, which is burning in the Mendocino, Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers national forests. It has scorched 255,309 acres — the ninth-largest burn zone — and was 27% contained as of Thursday.

Firefighters conduct a back burn operation along Highway 68 during the Creek fire as it approaches the Shaver Lake Marina.

(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

The massive Creek fire, which has chewed through more than 175,000 acres, destroyed an estimated 360 structures and prompted widespread evacuations in the Sierra foothills northeast of Fresno, is currently the 17th-largest in state history.

The fire caused an explosion in China Peak Mountain Resort, igniting a bunker of explosives that were used for avalanche mitigation, Fresno sheriff’s officials said. There was some damage to the resort, but no one was injured.

As is the case for the North Complex fire, the layer of smoke over the Creek fire has helped improve weather conditions. Milder winds and temperatures allowed firefighters to make progress for the first time, increasing the fire’s containment to 6%.

“We’re really trying to start gaining containment on this fire,” said Chris Vestal, a spokesman for the Creek fire response. “A lot of what we want to do is make sure everything that is standing stays standing.”

Firefighters also made progress with the fast-growing Bobcat fire, which doubled in size in one day to nearly 24,000 acres. The fire burning in the San Gabriel Mountains is now 6% contained, according to an incident report. The fire’s growth was largely in the northeast direction Thursday, sparing foothill residential communities.

The Transamerica Pyramid and Salesforce Tower in San Francisco are shrouded by wildfire smoke.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press )

Six areas remain under an evacuation warning: Duarte, Bradbury, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, Pasadena and Altadena.

Near Yucaipa, the El Dorado fire had burned almost 14,000 acres and was 31% contained as of Thursday morning. Though there’s no current threat to communities in Big Bear Valley, Cal Fire officials issued an advisory asking visitors to postpone visits to the area in case evacuations are ordered.

In San Diego County near the Mexican border, the Valley fire grew to 17,665 acres and was 35% contained, according to Cal Fire. Officials were reporting 15% containment for the 1,300-acre Willow fire, which sparked north of Smartsville in Yuba County on Wednesday. That fire has destroyed 30 structures, according to Cal Fire, while 700 others are considered threatened.

A firefighter watches flames ignite a tree as fire continues to spread at the Bear fire in Oroville.

(Josh Edelson / AFP )

The hope is that weather conditions will “improve across the state today, with most areas experiencing seasonal temperatures and dry conditions,” according to Cal Fire.

“Northern California should expect average temperatures through the weekend, with a possible cooling trend next week,” officials wrote in a statewide situation update Thursday. “In Southern California, temperatures will be at or slightly above normal.”

That would be a boon to firefighters, who have had to contend with a pair of scorching heat waves in the past few weeks. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said that last month was “the warmest August on record in California.”

With fires raging throughout the West Coast, the skies over California have taken an apocalyptic turn — choking the air with ash and smoke in some regions, while snuffing out sunlight in others. Rarely have so many Californians breathed such unhealthy air.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is warning that smoke and ash are likely to hit much of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties Thursday due to the two major fires locally and smoke flowing in from Northern California blazes.

The air district’s smoke advisory said that most of the Southern California region will be affected by smoke, with the highest readings of fine-particle pollution, tiny lung-damaging particles known as PM2.5, in areas closest to the Bobcat and El Dorado fires.

Smoke blowing in from Northern California “may also contribute to widespread elevated PM2.5 concentrations,” the air district said, but due to shifting winds, the smoke impacts “will be highly variable in both space and time.”

The air district said to expect “noticeable smoke and ash impacts” in southwest Los Angeles County, Orange County and southwest Riverside County.

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Brooks Hubbard with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers takes photos from the historic North Broadway Bridge over the Los Angeles River Tuesday morning as smoke and ash from the Bobcat fire cloak the area. 

(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

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Elijah Simpson practices shooting hoops against a backdrop of smokey skies from the Bobcat Fire at Angel’s Gate Park in the San Pedro on September 16, 2020.  

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

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A helicopter fights the Bobcat fire burning dangerously close to Mt. Wilson Observatory. 

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

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An aerial view of Dodger Stadium and the downtown Los Angeles skyline at sunset is obscured by smoke, ash and smog on Sept. 14. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Visitors check their photos at Griffith Observatory with a smoky view of the Hollywood sign behind them. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Two people get ready to surf as a hazy red sun sets off Hermosa Beach. 

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Smoke from the Bobcat fire burning in the Angeles National Forest blankets the Southland. 

(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

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An airplane flies through smoky skies in downtown Los Angeles. 

(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)

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A smoky haze envelopes Santa Monica Beach.  

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Beachgoers walk along the shoreline in Laguna Beach beneath a hazy sky. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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A crow on a cypress tree in Garden Grove is silhouetted by a sun obscured by ash from Southland wildfires. 

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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The sky is gray over the Santa Monica Pier as a family plays in the breakwater.  

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

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A man walks his dog past the historic lifeguard tower in Laguna Beach as the sun is obscured by smoke from wildfires. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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An upbeat message on the South Coast Cinemas marquee in Laguna Beach is dimmed by the smoky air. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Surfers near the Manhattan Beach Pier under a smoky sunset. 

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Gray skies over the Santa Monica Pier.  

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

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A hazy sun is seen behind the Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove. 

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Despite the unhealthful air quality, Fabian Ortez of Riverside enjoys an afternoon of fishing off the pier in Seal Beach. 

(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)

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The Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove. 

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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A bicyclist travels along the 1st Street Bridge as smoke hovers east of downtown Los Angeles. 

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

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Haze from the Bobcat fire looms over Azusa as it burns in Angeles National Forest. 

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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The Los Angeles skyline is shrouded in smoke from the Bobcat fire as seen from the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. 

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Haze from the Bobcat fire looms over Kare Park in Irwindale. 

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The bad air is being generated by fires raging in California, Oregon and Washington that are lofting smoke into the air in a massive plume that is blanketing the entire West Coast and extends far out into the Pacific.

But in Southern California much of that smoke has remained aloft. At the ground level, air quality remained in the “good” to “moderate” range Thursday morning across most of the region, except for areas near the Bobcat fire in the Angeles National Forest north of Azusa and Glendora, and the El Dorado fire in the San Bernardino Mountains near Yucaipa, where readings showed air quality in the “unhealthy” range.

Air quality has been significantly worse in Northern California, where raging fires this week have choked the air with smoke and ash and snuffed out the sunlight, casting a gloomy, orange pall over San Francisco and other areas. Air monitoring data Thursday morning showed unhealthy pollution levels in most of San Francisco and in other parts of the Bay Area.

Times staff writers Anita Chabria, Matthew Ormseth and Joe Mozingo contributed to this report.

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