Category Archives: Forest Fires

The Klamathon Fire on the Oregon and California border grew to 36,500 acres Monday night but improved to 40 percent containment, officials said in an evening report.  The fire inched its way forward on the Oregon side but only grew slightly to the northeast.  The progress allowed fire officials to downgrade evacuation levels in the Colestin Valley, outside Ashland, from “go now” to “get ready.” …“I’m confident that if the winds tonight (Monday), continue out of the northwest… we will turn the corner,” Southwest Oregon District Forester Dave Larson told the Ashland Daily Tidings. The next few days will remain crucial in projecting whether the fire becomes a long-term event.

Over the weekend firefighters gained the upper hand on the largest wildfires in the state, managing to keep them in check while enlarging fire lines, authorities say. However, a few smaller wildfires have been reported. Currently there are a dozen active wildfires burning from the Wyoming border to southern Colorado. Here’s a synopsis of current conditions of Colorado wildfires above 1,000 acres.

LOS ANGELES — Firefighters toiled in stifling heat Saturday on the lines of destructive wildfires across the U.S. West, making progress against some blazes while struggling to tame others that have forced evacuations of hundreds of homes. In heat-stricken Southern California, powerful winds that sent an overnight inferno hopscotching through the Santa Barbara County community of Goleta vanished in the morning, allowing firefighters to extinguish smoldering ruins of an estimated 20 structures, including homes. Authorities announced that mandatory evacuation orders were being greatly reduced and many of the 2,500 people who fled Friday night would be able to return home by late afternoon. County Fire Chief Eric Peterson thanked residents for heeding the call to evacuate, allowing firefighters to focus on fire suppression rather than rescues. “There very likely would have been fatalities last night had those evacuations not occurred,” Peterson said.

GOLD BEACH, Ore. – The Lobster Creek Fire in southwest Oregon is “shrinking,” as due to more accurate mapping, the fire size is now 397 acres, the Oregon Department of Forestry said Thursday. As the edge of the fire cools, allowing closer access, firefighters are able to utilize handheld global positioning system (GPS) devices to trace the perimeter more closely and move from an estimate fire size to a more precise calculation. Containment has reached 30 percent, officials said. Mop up operations will continue over the next few days until the fire is in a state that the fire team is comfortable handing the incident back to the Coos Forest Protective Association.

DENVER — Large wildfires grew across the American West on Wednesday, keeping thousands of people out of their homes for the July 4 holiday and forcing some strict bans on fireworks to prevent new fires from igniting in the hot, dry region. The National Interagency Fire Center on Wednesday reported more than 60 large, active blazes across the country, most in the drought-stricken West where holiday festivities could lead to increased fire danger. The third-largest fire in recorded Colorado history kept expanding, chewing through 147 square miles near Fort Garland, about 205 miles southwest of Denver. The Spring Fire has destroyed more than 100 homes, and over 2,000 have been evacuated. Officials said preventing the flames from spreading toward the small mountain town of Cuchara is a priority.

…Sonoma County’s hillsides are particularly picturesque and expensive. But their history of fire and development is instructive because it is so typical. And now, some officials and residents have begun to wonder aloud whether some fire-prone areas are too dangerous to inhabit. The population in Sonoma County’s wildland-urban interface, the high-risk boundary zone between nature and the built environment, increased about 20 percent between 1990 and 2010, according to county records – a rate that an analysis by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found matches the national median. As of 2012, there were 46 million homes in these areas nationwide. In the half-century-plus between the Hanly and Tubbs fires, people arrived in Sonoma County knowing nothing of the wildfire past. Planners and builders, who did know the risk, trusted it could be managed with fireproof building materials and clearings around homes. But for some, the Tubbs Fire has shaken that faith.

DENVER — A growing wildfire destroyed more than 100 homes in the Colorado mountains, while other blazes across the parched U.S. West kept hundreds of other homes under evacuation orders Tuesday and derailed holiday plans. Authorities announced late Monday that a fire near Fort Garland, about 205 miles (330 kilometers) southwest of Denver, had destroyed 104 homes in a mountain housing development started by multimillionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes in the 1970s. The damage toll could rise because the burn area is still being surveyed. …The blaze, labeled the Spring Fire, is one of six large wildfires burning in Colorado and is the largest at 123 square miles (318 square kilometers) — about five times the size of New York’s Manhattan. While investigators believe it was started by a spark from a fire pit, other fires, like one that began burning in wilderness near Fairplay, were started by lightning.

GUINDA, Calif. — Firefighters battling a Northern California wildfire that threatens nearly 1,000 homes and buildings say cooler weather may help efforts to corral the flames. The temperature was around 90 in the area on Tuesday and the high is expected to drop by about 5 degrees Wednesday. However, state fire officials say the erratic winds and tinder-dry brush and grass fueling the explosive spread of flames can still hamper containment. No homes have burned but some areas have been under evacuation orders for days. The fire is burning in three rural counties northwest of Sacramento and is only 15 percent contained. The County Fire has charred 113 square miles.

BEND, Ore. – If it seems like June has been especially fiery around Central Oregon, that’s because it has been. The month’s not even over yet, and it’s already on record as having the most wildfire starts in three years. Most of the fires across the region have been caused by lightning strikes, but a handful were human-caused. According to the Deschutes National Forest, June 2016 brought 64 fires and more than 8,000 acres burned, while June 2017 had 82 fires and more than 16,000 acres burned. So far, June of this year has already had 151 fires and more than 123,000 acres burned in the region. Deputy Fire Staff Officer Doug Johnson said the increase in wildfires is largely due to the environmental conditions.

Could this year’s summer be the one where North Idaho burns? Some experts believe that it is definitely possible, but it seems that eliminating the human threat may be the biggest step toward keeping that from happening. …North Idaho is projected to see some of the largest uptick in total area burned in the entire Western United States. …Shoshone County itself accounts for much of the North Idaho wilderness — covering 2,635 square miles of land, but only sporting roughly 12,500 residents. …Forest management agencies such as IDL and the United States Forest Service work hard to remove as many potential fuels as they can before fire season by utilizing controlled burn and logging operations, but there is only so much that can be done when it comes to mother nature (and human behavior).

The threat of an extraordinary wildfire season in the southwestern U.S. is forcing land managers to take extraordinary measures to try and limit the potential for catastrophe. So as of  Wednesday, the southernmost stretches of the long Rocky Mountain chain will be closed to the public when the majority of the Carson National Forest in New Mexico enters stage three fire restrictions. Stage three restrictions mean the forest is essentially closed to public access… The closure of the Carson comes on the heels of the earlier closure of the adjacent Santa Fe National Forest. Together they mean that all public lands within the Rocky Mountains are basically closed to the public in New Mexico. …But if this season is any indication of decades to come, a closed sign on the tip of one of the world’s greatest mountain ranges may become more a regularity than absurdity.

A wildfire in Northern California that forced more than 1,000 people to flee their homes grew overnight and was heading toward a sparsely populated area in a region severely hit by wildfires in recent years, authorities said Tuesday. The fire in Lake County north of San Francisco was nearly 46 square kilometres, said Emily Smith, a spokesperson with California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The blaze burning through dry brush, grass and timber has destroyed 12 homes and 10 other buildings since it started on Saturday. It is threatening another 600 buildings. …residents had to evacuate all homes in the town of Spring Valley …Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday declared a state of emergency in Lake County, where the biggest fire was raging about 190 kilometres north of San Francisco, a rural region particularly hard-hit by fires in recent years. The declaration will enable officials to receive more state resources to fight the fire and for recovery.

SAN FRANCISCO — Thousands fled their homes as major wildfires encroached on a charred area of Northern California still recovering from severe blazes in recent years, sparking concern the state may be in for another destructive series of wildfires this summer. Severe drought has already forced officials in several western states to close national parks as precautions against wildfires and issue warnings throughout the region to prepare for the worst. …Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday declared a state of emergency in Lake County, where the biggest fire was raging about 120 miles (190 kilometers) north of San Francisco, a rural region particularly hard-hit by fires in recent years. The declaration will enable officials to receive more state resources to fight the fire and for recovery.

With hot weather arriving in Oregon, wildfires are beginning to spring up around the state. Cooler weather helped firefighters make progress against three wildfires burning in Central Oregon, including the state’s largest blaze. The Boxcar Fire grew slightly to 99,500 acres overnight, but containment on the fire near Maupin has increased to 60 percent, officials said in a morning update. The biggest challenge on Boxcar remains in the Deschutes River Canyon, where trapped heat and inaccessible, steep terrain make firefighting difficult. Firefighters were transported into the canyon via jet boat on Monday.

Thousands of people have been told a massive wildfire burning through California, which has already forced mandatory evacuations, will continue to spread across the area. Firefighters warn that the blaze, which started in Pawnee in Lake County, California, is “out of control” and shows no sign of slowing down, reports CBS SF Bay Area. At least 10 houses have already been destroyed. Another 600 structures are currently under threat after the fire increased dramatically in size, encompassing more than 7,700 acres. It began around 5 p.m. on Saturday near the community of Clearlake Oaks. Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in the Spring Valley area as a result of the fire. Authorities said there have been no reports of any injuries or deaths as of yet.

Clearlake Oaks, California — Wind-driven wildfires destroyed buildings and threatened hundreds of others as they raced across dry brush in rural Northern California. The Pawnee Fire, which broke out Saturday near the community of Clearlake Oaks, has destroyed 12 buildings and threatened an additional 600. As of Sunday, there was no containment and it burned across about 12 square miles. Authorities ordered people to evacuate all homes in the Spring Valley area, where about 3,000 people live. …Farther north, a fire spanning about three-quarters of a mile in Tehama County destroyed “multiple residential and commercial buildings,” Cal Fire said. …A second fire in Tehama County consumed 5.5 square miles but no buildings were reported burned. …It was 10 percent contained. A fire in neighboring Shasta County grew to 1.6 square miles and was 20 percent contained.