Home there very close to getting flames on to it. Several communities have been or are expected to evacuate next few hours. Nbc bay area newsso. Explain what is happening here with the tent city. Reporter its with the conservation corps supporting the firefighters here. But intentional story of survival. Jason hickey cant believe hes alive tonight. In eight hours he had to outrun and outsmart a wildfire. Intense heat, falling trees, scalding embuzzer, nightmare he found himself in last night as he tried to leave home north of davenport. Couldnt find keys, ran to neighbor and took his car. Driveways, peacocks and dugs, i lost my rv. Reporter couldnt stop to think about it. Window wouldnt roll up, and Station Wagon ignited. Couldnt keep up with it after a while. Something had lit up inside the dash, and exploded, i had to get out. Cars up there melted. Reporter took off running and spent hours dodging flames with his bunny in a cage. Like a monster, and man, it was really scary. Reporter jason said he followed a path of burnt out zones while gusts over 50 miles an hour pushed flames closer to him. I thought i was going to die, get cooked. Reporter finally made it to road and was picked up by firefighter, relieved to have cheated death. I dont believe im alive. Really cant. Reporter incredibly, jason suffered no major injuries but sadly his bunny died, and jason is very concerned some of his neighbors did not make it out. Reporting live in scots valley, nbc bay area news. 85,000 acres have burned in scu. Contra costa, alameda and santa clara county, its 5 contained. A common theme, all the fires are 0 to 5 contained. No structures lost, two reported injuries, thousands voievacuate and more will be we expect. One of our reporters is among the evacuees. With so many now bring in nbc bay areas jodi hernandez. We talked about south bay, now solano and napa counties,er to through the neighborhoods there. Reporter been relentless. Weve been watching it flare up throughout the day in vacaville. One of the hot spots a short time ago. Hillside still black and smoky. Made a run down the hill towards a beautiful ranch style house. Fortunately the firefighters were able to save it. Not the case for a lot of houses out here. Rural vacaville hit hard as lmu lightning complex fire took off early this morning, zldestroyin homes and threatening pets and wildlife. The fire was loud, it whistled and roared, you could hear trees falling. Scariest thing ive ever been in. Reporter nancy millkin describes the fire. When it flared up, raced to bring more than 100 horses and sheep to safety. But it was too late to drive out. We were smart about it, knew it was coming at angle. Waited until it crowned before we started to lay a line. Reporter he and his 16yearold son bulldozed lines and poured water on the flames and rest of the family and animals huddled under the horse arena. Hot, felt it coming at your face, eyebrows about to get burnt off your face, no hair on your face, but its just skin burning. It hurts, it does. Reporter they got through the night without losing a single animal or their house. God was here. Its like he put a bubble around. Reporter and were back here live where you can see the black smoke, not a good sign. Again this area is still very much in danger and more areas of Solano County are being forced to evacuate, more folks forced to evacuate as fire makes way to fairfield, some areas under mandatory Evacuation Order. My house is under a evacuation warning right now, and as you guys mentioned, now interstate 80 is closed in fairfield between Fairfield Air base parkway and glen cherry road in vacaville. This is a changing situation. Also got a phone call from the Fairfield Unified School District that school has been canceled for the rest of the week. Today was first day of Distance Learning for children out here. My kids logged on but not many people logged on there. A lot changing. Families trying to figure out what to do. Very scary situation. Reporting live in Solano County, jodi hernandez, back to you. Frightening situation, covid and kids supposed to start, now another setback. Very menacing. Were going to continue to monitor whats happening in your home and with your family. Reporter thanks. So many fires burning all over. People including our own reporters forced out of their homes this evening. Chris chmura is tracking it. One end of the bay area to the other. For sure. Jodi in vacaville. Six flags here. Outlets here. Napa here. Jodi is here. This is the 80, that dark is indication that the interstate is currently closed. Let google map out the perimeter of the fire. You can see why its closed. This is the fire, just massive. There its jumped over 80. Lmu lightning complex fire. Evacuations. One of the most recent in santa clara county, talking east of milpitas, calaveras road to ed levin park. Sierra road, mt. Hamilton road. Sm thats not working. Back to napa. Tom jensen is in this neck of the woods. This is 121, Evacuation Order here over to Wooden Valley road. Map out lmu again. You can see why. Evacuation area here but fire here. Its not mapping but the fire is right here. Well continue to follow all of these. Another way to stay informed, sign up for nbc bay area alerts. We get it, we sent it to you, breaking news, fires, which way theyre moving, immediately send it out to you. Safe thing to do. Sign up through the nbc bay area app. Todays heat definitely not helping the firefight. Rob mayeda, so hot outside. And even when the temperatures go down next couple of days, its not that much. And thats sea level. Just a few degrees of cooling. Many of our microclimates we think of location by location but can be also elevation. Hills and mountaintops with warmer, drier air at night versus cooler air that sinks to the valleys. Seeing a combination of hot, dry conditions and intensities of wildfires building thunderstormlike structures outside. Santa cruz mountains. Pyrocumulus top, you need a lot of fire intensity, warm air rising rapidly. Gets up, collapses down, leads to wind shifts at surface. And when winds aloft are that strong, seeing so much ash around the bay area, these structures have been with all of the major fires, increasing the rates of spread and transporting ash far downwind. Thats the radar scanning there. Santa cruz. Point to point, upper 80s, mid90s. Humidity down to 15 in Solano County and napa county. Extreme conditions. More wind tonight. Good news for cooling around the bay but not good news in the hilltops. Red flag warning through 9 00 a. M. Tomorrow impacting north bay fires and east of san jose. Talk more about significant cooling in a few minutes. Its just a catch22, want the wind to clear out the smoke but increases the flames at fire line. This is drone video of thick haze in the south bay last hour, near highway 85 17 interchange in los gatos. Get ready for a long few days ahead of us. Janelle wang tracking the air quality across the bay area. A little bit of good news, it has improved, air quality in some areas. But still have unhealthy levels across the bay area. At peak today, around late morning noon, we had some of the worst air quality in the world. Check out this website, called purple air. Air monitoring website. Dark red is unhealthiest air, a bit of San Francisco, south bay and east bay along the 886 80 corridor. Peninsula was in dark red earlier but clearing up. Because of all the wildfires, every bay area county except San Francisco county. You can see the extreme heat trapping the haze on us like a blanket. District says everyone should stay indoors. Children, elderly, people with respiratory issues. Try to put your air conditioner on recirculate if its possible. Peninsula saw worst air quality because of the wildfires in san mateo county. Jackie is live with how people are coping. Weve been on the peninsula all day. This morning couldnt see the sun, dangerous levels. I see some blue sky now. What are you seeing . Reporter it was really eerie earlier to start the day, for sure. As the day progressed, yes, we have blue skies here for now. As night falls and wind is expected to die down, air quality is expected to go from bad to worse again. Between 101 and 280, in that area, youre getting impact. Reporter those impacts look like this, thick smoke settling in pockets across the bay area, and especially redwood city. Drink a lot of water, try to get as much shade as possible, stay cool. Reporter the poor air quality combined with heat made for extra tough day for ramon lopez, who has the grueling task of raising iron on recently paved roads. With the masks, pandemic thing is hard because of the masks. Reporter down the block, inperson meeting with coworkers First Time Since march. Terrible because we can see the ashes floating out of the sky and smell the smoke in the air. Reporter says maybe face coverings and staying home not so bad at all. Stay home and dont go outside. After the meeting im going back to my room. Its a double benefit, stay away from the smoke and the covid. Reporter janelle, local air quality experts say that spare the air alert in effect now is expected to stay in effect until friday, maybe even the weekend. Were hearing that too, jackie. Through sunday now. Thanks so much. If you do go outside, these cloth masks dont protect from wood smoke. Need n95 mask or higher to protect you from the smoke. Jessica. Thanks janelle. Were staying on top of the fires impacting so many this evening. One of our photojournalists has harrowing ordeal, are forced to leave in the middle of the night. Hes going to share his story and pictures coming up next. We continue our breaking News Coverage of the various fires across the bay area. This is the lmu complex fire. This is napa county, Solano County and sonoma county. You can see how intense the flames are, prompted shutdown of interstate 80 in fairfield right now. Homes, outbuildings and barns have burned, animals have died. As weve experienced in recent years, people can only watch on tv to see the burnt out shells of their properties. Among those told to evacuate, our photojournalist captures these images. Robbie joins us now. This is surreal. This is what you do. You go into fires with our crews all the time to shoot video of people being evacuated, now youre the one being evacuated. Must have been super freaky. Reporter yeah, exactly. Ive covered fires all over the north bay, northern california, but its a little bit different in your backyard. Last night all this ash was raining down on our houses like snow. A huge orange glow behind our house here getting brighter and brighter. Most of the neighbors around this area have taken the advice of fire and have evacuated. Now its just me and my wife here. Robbie, i know its your instinct to shoot the video and get the story because thats who you are. What was it like trying to get out with your family and doing this dual thing of capturing the story but got to get family out . Thats right. Its hard for me to split that up, but i was out there shooting the fire video, my wife was calling me on the phone saying i see a lot of glow, smell a lot of smoke. I think we need to start packing up. I came home. We had a plan, we had everything in tubs and packed up the cars and were ready to go at moments notice. Then once i had that done, i came back out and started gathering more. Of course you did. Just like you always do. Glad to know youre safe, and what can i say, thats who you are. Thanks a lot. Reporter thank you. Robbie is one of the best in the business. Right . Bring in rob mayeda now. Talk about what to expect. Been talking about this for 24 hours, usually one or two fires were focused on. This time across the region and even on the peninsula which rarely gets major fires. And bay area was one of the big sites for all the lightning strikes sunday and monday, after a day, may have smoldered for 24 hours and with the heating we saw, allowed the fires to take off. Heat is the driver for many of the problems were seeing right now in terms of fire danger, power issues and excessive heat warning has been with us. This will end at 9 00 this evening. Probably last day well see over 100 degrees inland. Seeing cooling already in San Francisco. Talk about good news, cooling on the order of five to seven degrees cooler most places because of the onshore wind. But very different environment from what you see at sea level, around the bay versus higher up across the hills where many of the fires are burning. Difference in relative humidity overnight, bay area numbers go up. Clearlake, napa, east of morgan hill, that scu complex is burning there. Dry conditions. Daytime dry as we sometimes say. Why we have to focus on these areas, those types of conditions leads to fires active, not backing off at night. Covering that, red flag warning for some areas through 9 00 tomorrow morning. Could see dry and breezy conditions there. Air along the creek, starting to clear out a little bit. One of the benefits of the sea breeze. Still unhealthy most of the bay area tomorrow but not as bad as today, lot of the numbers over 200 in aqi index. Starting to turn in air quality. Fog making a comeback on the coast. Could wake up to patchy fog not smoke for a change. Around half moon bay. Inland, warmest places should be in mid90s as opposed to 105. Pleasanton, low 90s. Peninsula, mostly 80s. San mateo to palo alto, and north bay temperatures lower 80s to 90s, but mid to upper 90s for elevations above 2,000 feet. Areas of smoke, will get better. Temperatures rebounding in the weekend. Heating up but hopefully stay away from the excessive heat warnings last five days. More news on bay area wildfires after this short break. For the sweaty faces. And the hidden smiles. The foggy glasses. And the muffled laughs. A simple piece of fabric makes a big statement i care. Wear a mask. Lets all do our part to slow the spread. Our other headlines this evening, encouraging news in San Francisco. Tomorrow the city could get taken off governor newsoms watch list. Opens door for more businesses to reopen and Elementary Schools possibly to have students on campus. San francisco is one of the eight bay area counties on the watch list. If its removed, 39 still on the list across the state, marin, sonoma, napa, and other counties. Night three of the Democratic National convention. Kamala harris, first woman of color to join a major party ticket. Preview of the biological video that will play before. Nancy pelosi, elizabeth warren, Kamala Harris and barack obama will speak as well. Big night on nbc bay area. Well continue to watch the area, sky ranger over san mateo county, you can see the amount of smoke blanketing the area. Were back in a moment. Experience the ultimate sports hub. Where you can find games, news and highlights. All in one place, right on your tv. The xfinity sports zone. Use your voice to search every stat, standing and score. Follow the teams you love. And, even get notifications with breaking news alerts and more. So youll never miss an update. With the xfinity sports zone everybody wins. Now thats simple, easy, awesome. Click, call or visit a store for details. A few updates before we leave you. I80 still closed in fairfield, flames jumped the freeway. There is traffic backed up for miles. Live look in san mateo county, fire spreading into santa cruz county. Well send it to lester holt in a minute, then well be back at 6 00 with the update. Tonight, history in the making at the Democratic National convention, Kamala Harris set to become the first woman of color to accept a major partys Vice President ial nomination how shell make the case for herself and joe biden. Plus, barack obama, the first look at his message tonight. And Hillary Clinton back to take new aim at her old foe president trump. State of emergency over 30 wildfires raging in california tens of thousands evacuated, dozens of homes destroyed, extreme heat supercharging the flames. The coronavirus at colleges, a larming images, students evicted after this