Amid nearly 30 raging wildfires, an intense triple-digit heat wave and under threat of power outages and blackouts, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a California state of emergency on Tuesday, Aug. 18.

The move was meant to ensure that vital services and supplies needed to fight the fires and protect residents would be available across the state, the governor said. It followed efforts made earlier in the week to arrange for grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund the state’s response to blazes burning in Napa, Nevada and Monterey counties, an announcement by the governor’s office said.

“We are deploying every resource available to keep communities safe as California battles fires across the state during these extreme conditions,” Newsom was quoted in the announcement as saying. “California and its federal and local partners are working in lockstep to meet the challenge and remain vigilant in the face of continued dangerous weather conditions.”

Conditions Call for Quick Response

Lightning strikes sparked some of the wildfires that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, was tracking when the state of emergency was declared, according to reports by NBC News. Shortly before and after the declaration, residents in coastal Northern California, around Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, and in wine country, Napa and Sonoma counties, were ordered to evacuate. Combined, the fires had burned up more than 150,000 acres by the morning after the governor’s announcement, and very few were contained in any measurable way thanks to the heat and windy conditions.

The heat wave held the state under threat of rolling blackouts and power outages given the heavy strain placed on the power grid there. Newsom agreed to allow some utilities to tap backup sources to prevent blackouts earlier in the week, but overloaded equipment gave way in Los Angeles, leaving some customers of the city’s Department of Water and Power without electricity on Tuesday, Aug. 18.

It was 125 degrees in Death Valley at the time, according to the National Weather Service, NBC reported.

Challenges Even Before California State of Emergency

In the months preceding the California state of emergency declaration, challenges were piling up in front of the state’s firefighting efforts.

First, the state experienced one of the driest winters on record, which put parts of the northwestern region in a severe drought. At that time, forecasters began predicting an above normal potential for large fires this fall and a newly released research project at Stanford University suggested climate change was expanding the traditional wildfire season from late summer to late fall.

Then the coronavirus pandemic took hold, causing an expected $54 billion budget deficit in the Golden State. That forced Newsom in June to abandon plans to spend $26 million on a project to retrofit houses and other buildings in wildfire zones with fire-resistant materials in the hopes of reducing wildfire damage.

A month later, an outbreak of COVID-19 led to state prison officials placing more than 25% of California’s prison fire camps on lockdown, which cut in half the number of trained inmate firefighters available. The inmate crews are an integral part of the state’s firefighting force and are often among the first on the scene, working on the ground to stop the spread of wildfires.

Particularly hard hit was the region most vulnerable to wildfires, Northern California, where almost half the inmate firefighting crews are available for a time, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Apple Fire Still Burning

One of the largest individual fires burning when the California state of emergency was declared was the Apple Fire in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, which started on July 31. As of Aug. 18, that wildfire had consumed more than 33,400 acres and at least four homes, and spread into the San Bernardino National Forest, according to Cal Fire.

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