Here is the official live map of major active wildfires in Orange County and across California plus a map of historical wildfires.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) responds to all types of emergencies. When the Department responds to a major CAL FIRE jurisdiction incident, the Department will post incident details to the web site. Major emergency incidents could include large, extended-day wildfires (10 acres or greater), floods, earthquakes, hazardous material spills, etc. This is a summary of all incidents, including those managed by CAL FIRE and other partner agencies.
OC & California Wildfire Map
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) live map of major wildfires.
Follow the Orange County Fire Authority official Twitter account for live updates.
2022 Fire Season Outlook
In the North state, the weather outlook for October through January calls for mixed temperature and precipitation anomalies due to highly variable weather patterns. October should be a mix between warmer and drier conditions followed by cool and slightly moist periods, with a few northerly offshore wind events. Lightning is not expected to be a big factor during this outlook period, with long-term drought likely to improve later in the fall. In the South, with the potential for a later than normal start to the rainy season and the ongoing drought, significant fire potential is expected to remain above normal over portions of Southern CA.
2022 Orange County Fires
- Coastal Fire: Started 5/11/2022; 200 acres burned
- Jim Fire: Started 3/2/2022; 553 acres burned
- Emerald Fire: Started 2/9/2022; 154 acres burned
2021 Fire Season
The 2021 wildfire season in California experienced an unusually early start amid an ongoing drought and historically low rainfall and reservoir levels. In January 2021 alone, 297 fires burned 1,171 acres on nonfederal land, which is almost triple the number of fires and more than 20 times the acreage of the five-year average for January. In July, more than three times as many acres had burned compared to the previous year through that date, with drought, extreme heat, and reduced snowpack contributing to the severity of the fires. On August 18, 2021, the state of California was facing “unprecedented fire conditions” as multiple fires including the Dixie Fire, McFarland Fire, Caldor Fire, and others raged on. In October, the state of California, especially in the Northern regions where most of the fires were located, received its first rain in over 200 days reducing the wildfire risk for much of the state.
2021 Orange County Fires
No major incidents.
2020 Fire Season
The 2020 California wildfire season was characterized by a record-setting year of wildfires that burned across the state of California as measured during the modern era of wildfire management and record keeping. As of the end of the year, nearly 10,000 fires had burned over 4.2 million acres, more than 4% of the state’s roughly 100 million acres of land, making 2020 the largest wildfire season recorded in California’s modern history. California’s August Complex fire has been described as the first “gigafire” as the area burned exceeded 1 million acres. The fire crossed seven counties and has been described as being larger than the state of Rhode Island. On August 19, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom reported that the state was battling 367 known fires, many sparked by intense thunderstorms on August 16–17. In early September 2020, a combination of a record-breaking heat wave, and Diablo and Santa Ana winds sparked more fires and explosively grew the active fires, with the August Complex more than doubling the Mendocino Complex’s size to become California’s largest recorded wildfire.
2020 Orange County Fires
- Bond Fire: Started 12/2/2020; 6,686 acres burned
- Blue Ridge Fire: Started 10/26/202013,964 acres burned
- Silverado Fire: Started 10/26/202012,466 acres burned
2019 Fire Season
In comparison with the destructive years which preceded it, 2019 was a relatively mild fire season. 7,860 fires burned a total of 259,823 acres. In late October, the Kincade Fire became the largest fire of the year, burning 77,758 acres in Sonoma County. Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric preemptively shut off power to 800,000 electric customers to reduce the risk of wildfires by preventing electrical arcing in high winds from their above-ground power lines.
2019 Orange County Fires
No major incidents.
2018 Fire Season
The 2018 wildfire season was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season on record in California, with a total of over 7,500 fires burning an area of over 1,670,000 acres, the largest area of burned acreage recorded in a fire season. In mid-July to August 2018, a series of large wildfires erupted across California, mostly in the northern part of the state, including the destructive Carr Fire and the Mendocino Complex Fire. On August 4, 2018, a national disaster was declared in Northern California, due to the extensive wildfires burning there. In November 2018, strong winds aggravated conditions in another round of large, destructive fires that occurred across the state. This new batch of wildfires included the Woolsey Fire and the Camp Fire, which killed at least 85 people. It destroyed more than 18,000 structures, becoming both California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record. The Mendocino Complex Fire burned more than 459,000 acres, becoming the largest complex fire in the state’s history, with the complex’s Ranch Fire surpassing the Thomas Fire and the Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889 to become California’s single-largest recorded wildfire.
2018 Orange County Fires
- Holy Fire: Started 8/6/2018; 23,136 acres burned
- Santiago Fire: Started 6/11/2018; 155 acres burned
- Aliso Fire: Started 6/2/2018; 175 acres burned
2017 Fire Season
In terms of property damage, 2017 was the most destructive wildfire season on record in California at the time. Throughout 2017, the fires destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 structures in the state (destroyed 9,470, damaged 810), a higher tally than the previous nine years combined. In total 9,133 fires burned 1,248,606 acres. In December 2017, strong Santa Ana winds triggered a new round of wildfires, including the massive Thomas Fire in Ventura County. At the time, the Thomas Fire was California’s largest modern wildfire, which has since been surpassed by the Mendocino Complex’s Ranch Fire in 2018. The December 2017 fires forced over 230,000 people to evacuate. 2017 will be remembered as a year of extremes. It was the third-warmest year on record for the United States, and it was the second-hottest in California, bringing to the surface the question of long-term climate change and its contribution to the 2017 California fires. The hotter temperatures dry out vegetation, making them easier to burn, predisposing vulnerable regions like California to more wildfires in the coming decades as temperatures continue to rise and rainfall continues to decline.
2017 Orange County Fires
- Canyon 2 Fire: Started 10/9/2017; 2,662 acres burned
- Canyon Fire: Started 9/25/2017; 2,575 acres burned
2016 Fire Season
In 2016, over 6,900 fires burned an area of over 669,000 acres across California, Climatologists had predicted an extreme version of El Niño, known as a Super El Niño, to occur during the winter of 2015–16. Although the Pacific Ocean’s warming water had been expected to bring strong storms to parts of the southwestern United States, actual precipitation totals generally underperformed those expectations. Early in 2016, The National Interagency Fire Center predicted that conditions from May through at least August would put much of the western United States in above-normal wildfire danger. In June, the United States Forest Service estimated that over 26 million trees had died across 760,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This brought the number of dead trees to over 66 million during the past four years of drought. On August 15, the National Interagency Fire Center showed the state leading the nation in the quantity, size and intensity of wildfires. A day later, on August 16, San Bernardino County announced that nearly 85,000 people were evacuated because of the Blue Cut Fire near Cajon Pass.
2016 Orange County Fires
- Holy Fire: Started 8/30/2016; 150 acres burned
- Laguna Fire: Started 6/26/2016; 47acres burned
2015 Fire Season
A total of over 8,200 wildfires burned a total area of over 880,000 acres in California during 2015. On September 11, after the Butte Fire exploded from a size of 32,000 acres to 65,000 acres, in the Amador and Calaveras counties, Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency.
2015 Orange County Fires
- 241 Fire: Started 7/13/2015; 214 acres burned
2014 Fire Season
In the context of the 2011–17 California drought, as well as powerful Santa Ana winds, weather conditions were ideal for wildfires in 2014. Over 7,200 wildfires ignited throughout the year, burning at least 620,000 acres. The season began unusually early when a wildfire ignited on January 1, followed by 6 more fires igniting later within the same month. During a heat wave and dry Santa Ana conditions in May 2014, multiple wildfires broke out simultaneously in San Diego County and elsewhere across the state. By mid-May, fire officials said they had already dealt with 1,400 wildfires – twice the normal amount for that time of year – and a spokesman for CAL FIRE described the conditions as “unprecedented.” In early September 2014, the Happy Complex Fire became the largest wildfire of the season, eventually topping out at 135,369 acres in size on September 27.
2014 Orange County Fires
- Silverado Fire: Started 9/12/2014; 968 acres burned
2013 Fire Season
Over 9,000 wildfires burned at least 600,000 acres of land, in the state of California, during 2013. These included several large, notable wildfires, including the Rim Fire, which became California’s 3rd largest wildfire. One of the wildfires was also caused by the plane crash of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 on July 6, 2013, which ignited a wildfire that burned around 1 acre of land.
2013 Orange County Fires
- Baker Fire: Started 10/6/2013; 40 acres burned
Source: The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE)