California's Mendocino Complex fires explode to cover 230,000 acres


Another person was killed by California's massive Carr Fire Saturday, officials reported, bringing the death toll to seven. The most recent victim was a power company lineman whose identity has not been made public. The wildfire has burned more than 155,000 acres in a two-week span, displacing 35,000 people and destroying more than 1,500 buildings.
Meanwhile, the Mendocino Complex, a pair of fires about 150 miles south of the Carr Fire's Redding-area burn zone, exploded to cover 230,000 acres by Sunday morning.
The Mendocino Complex fires are now the sixth-largest wildfire in recorded California history, but, so far, have destroyed far fewer buildings than the Carr Fire.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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