SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – As the McKinney Fire burns for a second consecutive week, California's largest blaze this year is now almost as big as Oakland and San Francisco's combined land area.
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Having burned 60,044 acres near the California-Oregon border in Siskiyou County as of Saturday morning, the McKinney Fire covered a larger land area than each city.
Oakland's land area is 53.8 square miles, or 34,442 acres. The 2020 U.S. Census measured San Francisco's land area as 46.91 square miles, or a little more than 30,022 acres.
San Jose, meanwhile, has a land area of 178.26 square miles, which is just over 114,086 acres. In other words, the McKinney Fire is just about half as big as the Bay Area's most populous city.
With containment improving to 30% following a few days of helpfully wet weather, officials now have a stronger sense of the residential damage toll.
The McKinney Fire destroyed 87 homes as of Saturday morning, according to the U.S. Forest Service, as the agency provided its first update on the damage to inspected buildings.
Officials said crews have completed more than 50% of their initial damage assessment, with 132 total structures destroyed. The Forest Service had inspected 274 structures as of Saturday morning, meaning nearly half (48.2%) of the inspected buildings are no longer standing.
At least four people have died since the McKinney Fire started burning on July 29, and the blaze destroyed the 200-person town of Klamath River. Although containment improved enough to downgrade some evacuation orders to warnings, the typical seasonal heat returned on Saturday, with officials fearing that conditions could worsen.
Dennis Burns, a fire behavior analyst with the Forest Service, said during Friday's community meeting that Sunday and Monday's weather is "going to be almost identical to when this fire started."
"The biggest fear is we have a jackpot of unburned fuel within the fire perimeter and it ignites," Burns said in the meeting, via Bay Area News Group.
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