August Complex (2020)
August 17 – November 12, 2020
Fast Facts
- Date
- August 17 – November 12, 2020
- Acres burned
- 1,032,648 — largest single wildfire in CA history
- Counties
- Mendocino, Tehama, Glenn, Lake, Colusa, Trinity, Shasta
- Origin
- 38 lightning-caused ignitions that merged
- Deaths
- 1
- Structures destroyed
- 935
- Rank
- First "gigafire" (>1M acres) in modern California
Cause: Lightning storm — 38 separate ignitions, later merged
Perimeter & Origin Map
Hover or tap markers for detailsPerimeter is a simplified polygon approximating the final burn footprint from NIFC/CalFire records. Origin coordinates from the official incident investigation report.
The 2020 lightning siege
The first gigafire
Frequently Asked Questions
How big was the August Complex fire?
The August Complex burned 1,032,648 acres (approximately 1,614 square miles) across seven counties in northern California — making it the largest single wildfire in California's recorded history. It was the first wildfire in the modern era to exceed one million acres in a single state, sometimes called a "gigafire."
How did the August Complex start?
The August Complex began as 38 separate ignitions across the Mendocino National Forest during a historic lightning siege from August 16-19, 2020. As initial-attack resources were overwhelmed by simultaneous fires across northern California (the LNU and SCU complexes were burning in parallel further south), many of the smaller Mendocino fires merged into what was first managed as the "Doe Fire" and later renamed the August Complex.
Why was the August Complex called a "gigafire"?
The term "gigafire" had been used informally by fire researchers since the early 2010s to describe wildfires exceeding one million acres — a scale previously associated only with rangeland fires in remote Alaska or the Australian outback. The August Complex was the first wildfire in modern California history to reach the gigafire threshold, and the first conifer-forest fire in the Lower 48 to do so.