Grass, meet spark. Bay Area residents, meet fire. The explosive start to the 2024 fire season — the Corral Fire near Livermore that tore through rolling grasslands and rapidly scorched more acreage than the 1,253 previous California wildfires this year combined — heralds the types of blazes experts say residents of the Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California can expect in coming weeks: fast-moving grass fires.
What comes later depends largely on the weather. Two wet winters in a row and the end of drought conditions have kept forested areas moist but fostered abundant growth of grasses that are now drying rapidly into beautiful, golden tinder. “We’re seeing grass crops in excess of six to eight feet in some of our backcountry which is really going to make our fire suppression efforts tough in the Santa Clara Unit,” said Cal Fire Chief Baraka Carter, whose unit covers Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and western Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
Parched, low-lying vegetation is vulnerable to the leap-frogging fire behavior that comes when the wind carries embers far and wide, Carter said. “Those fires are going to move really fast.” While the Corral Fire, which sent two burned firefighters to hospitals, torched only one home, fire officials warn that flames could push into residential areas in many Bay Area neighborhoods bordering grasslands.
The East Bay hills, San Jose’s Santa Teresa and Blossom Hill neighborhoods, communities around Mount Diablo, .
