As firefighters began to make significant progress on two of the 12 deadly wildfires raging in drought-stricken areas of California, emergency crews on Tuesday had to also contend with a small natural disaster near one of the wildfires and flooding in Los Angeles.

Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Sunday for Lake and Napa counties to allow the state to use resources including the California National Guard.

“This word of unprecedented is used quite often, but we have not seen a fire like this in decades”, said McGuire.

El Niño Contributes to a Tale of Two Winter Seasons.

Families took what they could as the flames raced toward them, but many memories were left in ashes as 400 homes burned, fire officials said.

Winds whipped new life Monday into northern California wildfires that have killed a woman, hospitalized firefighters, and reduced hundreds of homes to smoldering ruins. “We lost everything”, said Taylor.

Northern parts of the state also see a chance for precipitation early this week, as the video below illustrates.

Local media said one person had been confirmed dead but there were no immediate details on the identity of the victim or the circumstances in which she died.

But containment of the fire, a measure of how much of its perimeter has been enclosed within buffer lines carved through vegetation by ground crews to prevent its spread, stood at 15 percent, up from 10 percent on Monday, Cal Fire said.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department has sent between 125 and 150 firefighters to help battle the Butte Fire in Amador and Calaveras counties, the Valley Fire in Lake County and the Rough Fire in Fresno County, said department Dispatch Supervisor Kyle Sanford.

“She’s like, ‘No I’m fine, it’s gonna be fine.’ She didn’t understand the magnitude of it”, Hittson said.

As wildfires exploded over the weekend, four firefighters were injured. The fire started Saturday but expanded quickly, devouring 40,000 acres over the span of just a few hours as embers blanketed residential areas.

Evacuations put in place over the last week north of Highway 49 and west of Highway 4 have been lifted, Cal Fire said Monday. The main cause behind the fast-spreading fires is dry conditions from the drought.

The costs of containing other fires, such as those blazing in Sierra Nevada forests, are largely covered by federal agencies and not included in those figures. Another 9,000 are threatened, according to Cal Fire.