For the second time in just over a year, people in the Bay Area woke up to find ash covering their driveways and apocalyptic levels of smoke closing schools and canceling events. In short, California is burning. Large areas of the state from Malibu to Chico are being evacuated as a series of incredibly fast moving fires engulf acres of land (along with anything that sits upon them). Thousands of structures have been destroyed and fatalities have been reported. NBC News: 3 blazes destroying homes and forcing massive evacuations.

+ AP: “A wildfire that moved so fast firefighters didn’t even try to stop it killed five people, authorities said Friday as the blaze quadrupled in size after leveling much of a Northern California town of nearly 30,000 people.” (San Francisco is about 170 miles away from the fire’s epicenter. But the entire Bay went from clear skies to being blanketed by smoke, haze, and ash over the course of an hour or two.)

+ Paradise, California: “The whole town’s on fire.” Here are some devastating photos from the scene.