My thoughts go to the victims, present and future (due to the smoke spreading and being so thick). In Portugal, we had two killer fires in 2017.
What I find as a common thread between these events is such distant countries, are the reports from firemen about how they never saw such fierce and challenging fires before. I saw a piece on TV, one year after the October fires in Portugal: some common aspects with California fire - reports on how the fire seemed to come from above, from the air itself; plus the quick changing due to coastal winds.
In October 2017, the killer fire in Portugal was "fanned" by hot winds coming from the Sahara; the soil, at the end of a very dry Summer, was really easy to caught fire...
