Photos: SF crews help fight one of the most devastating fires in state history

San Francisco firefighters are on the front lines of one of the most destructive fires ever in California — a blaze that already killed about a dozen people, burned well over 12,000 buildings, prompted sweeping evacuations in and around Los Angeles, and is still barely contained.

The San Francisco Fire Department on Saturday counted 31 staffers dispatched directly to fight the apocalyptic blazes tearing through Southern California, according to Capt. Jonathan Baxter.

Another eight are deployed to search-and-rescue efforts.

In all, 39 SFFD firefighters were sent Tuesday — the second day of the fires — on a two-week deployment that puts them alongside several thousands of other first-responders from all over California and beyond.

Firefighters who work beyond their jurisdiction enlist themselves for the service, Baxter told The Standard, and that requires annual, state-certified mutual-aid training.

Though the flames are still burning and the numbers still preliminary, the Los Angeles wildfires rank as some of the most damaging ever in California.

The most destructive to date was the 2018 Camp Fire, which torched upward of 18,000 buildings as it raced across 153,000 acres.

The second-most damaging was the Tubbs Fire, which in 2017 leveled 5,600 structures in Napa and Sonoma counties.

Twenty-six years before that, the Tunnel Fire destroyed a few-thousand homes in the Oakland Hills, making it the third-most destructive fire ever recorded in California.

Those rankings, of course, stand to change as the fires continue to advance around some of the most populated urban clusters in the state in the days ahead.