A fire in Northern California grew overnight after dry winds Tuesday fanned flames, making the blaze the largest in the state so far this year. The Mosquito Fire, which started Sept. 6, spread nearly 10,000 acres (4,046.9 hectares) and now covers a footprint of 58,544 acres in El Dorado and Placer counties, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. The blaze was 49,761 acres Tuesday. Burning east of Sacramento, the fire had forced 11,277 people to be evacuated and was 20% contained as of Tuesday morning, according to Cal Fire. It has destroyed at least 64 buildings and threatens nearly 6,000. …“The fire area remains a dynamic situation that may change at any time, as evidenced by the fire activity on Tuesday afternoon,” Cal Fire said. Evacuation orders remain in force.
PORTLAND, Oregon — The Oregon Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from 13 counties in a long-running $1 billion lawsuit over timber revenue. The denial ends a six-year legal battle over logging practices on 700,000 acres and is a victory for the state Department of Forestry and environmental groups. The decision leaves in place a lower court ruling saying that Oregon can manage forests for a range of values that include recreation, water quality and wildlife habitat — not just logging revenue. …The counties gave forestland to the state decades ago and Oregon manages the land and funnels timber revenue to the counties. But 13 counties took Oregon to court, alleging the state was not maximizing logging on the forests. A Linn County jury found in the counties’ favor in 2019 and awarded more than $1 billion in damages, but an appeals court struck down the verdict earlier this year.
It costs Alaskans $20 million a year to import lumber, mostly from Canada, that has the quality inspection stamps required by lending institutions who finance most home and building construction. Alaska has a lot small local sawmills that need customers. Ironically, the lack of a state lumber inspection and certification program forces Alaska builders to import lumber from places out-of-state where the certifications can be done, and that adds to costs. The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection wants to change that. The agency is developing a new program to increase the use of Alaskan wood by allowing local sawmill operators to self-certify their lumber, the division said Sept 16. Local Use Lumber is a concept that promotes locally produced dimensional lumber to be used in some residential construction, usually single and double family houses. 
Two years ago, the East Troublesome wildfire in Colorado’s Arapaho National Forest raced up the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, at one point crossing over the Continental Divide amid 12,000-foot-tall peaks. It would become the second largest wildfire in state history, and started on the same October day that the Cameron Peak fire would be crowned Colorado’s largest ever fire. …the two massive 2020 blazes represented prime examples of a troubling trend: wildfires are burning at higher altitudes in the major mountain ranges of the West, including in areas that are normally cloaked in deep snows in winter. Winter snowpack that melts slowly in the spring and summer is a primary water source for the West. And so these trends of more fire at higher elevations and faster melting represent “a major threat to a critical water reservoir for the region,” said Dan McGrath, a Colorado State University scientist.
A new draft of the Oregon wildfire risk map that received public outcry earlier this year will be released next March, the Oregon Department of Forestry said. The 
OREGON — A court battle is shaping up over a coast range timber plan. Oregon-based conservation organizations Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild have 
Gunnison County’s Land Use Resolution (LUR) now contains new building code adjustments in response to an increasing urban wildland interface, and the new codes will apply a higher standard of wildfire hazard mitigation to all new building permit applications beginning in 2023. 
SAN FRANCISCO — A major storm that battered western Alaska over the weekend churned through Northern California on Monday after bringing early-season snow to mountains and dropping rain that helped firefighters increase their containment of a huge wildfire. No growth was reported on the 119-square-mile Mosquito Fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento. The blaze was 38% contained Monday after downpours allowed sheriff’s officials in two counties to lift or downgrade some evacuation orders. It’s the state’s largest wildfire of the year so far. More rain was expected, which fire spokesman Scott McLean called a mixed blessing for firefighters. “It did help a bit to stifle that aggressive fire,” McLean said. “But we’re going to have new safety issues now with all the mud that’s out there. And the ground moisture could cause some of those damaged trees to fall over.”
POWELL COUNTY, Montana — The No Grass Creek fire east of Deer Lodge is estimated to be 1,145 acres, U.S. forest officials said Thursday. The fire, reported on Sunday, is in Powell County on the west end of the Helena Ranger District and the far east end of the Pintler Ranger District. It is being managed by the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, in close coordination with Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. The fire is in an area that has had large amounts of tree mortality, officials with the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest said. It is dense and continuous throughout the Electric Peak roadless area and recommended wilderness area. Because of the current state of the dead timber, it’s neither safe nor effective to put fire personnel into the area, officials said. 