(TNS) - The burn area of the Valley fire in Northern California covers more than 100 square miles, and by Tuesday morning, the property toll included 585 homes, as well as many other structures.
Attempting to contain and control the fire in Lake County are some 1,400 personnel from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, state prison camps, community fire departments and wildland firefighters from Colorado.
Three major wildfires continued to burn out of control Tuesday, and Gov. Jerry Brown warned the previous day that, given the ravages of drought and the growing influence of climate change, “there is more to come.”
By comparison, the similarly sized Butte fire to the east in the Sierra Nevada had nearly 4,600 personnel on it Tuesday morning, including 505 fire engines.
Michael said it is not fair to compare the number of crews, trucks and helicopters sent to different fires.
“I don’t know why you need to compare. Each incident is different. They are all equally important,” Michael said. “They lost structures on the Butte fire, they lost structures here.
“They do prioritize incidents but right now because they’re all losing structures, they’re all having extreme fire behavior, they’re all probably equal.”
How the state tasks its fire assets is not just a matter of how many fires, but which ones started first, and “the resources that were assigned initially,” he said.
Michael struggled with the question of why more resources are not being diverted to the Valley fire, with 9,000 homes threatened. The Butte Fire, which remains only 35 percent contained, has 6,400 threatened structures.
“If we have 20 houses burning and we pulled all of the resources off and sent them to another fire that had 100 houses that were threatened, would you as a private citizen appreciate that?” he said.
By the start of Tuesday, 2,300 personnel had joined the effort, including 15 helicopters, a CalFire spokesman said.
Large planes with fire retardant had not worked the Valley fire since its start Saturday. They are expected to join the fray Tuesday, as cloud cover lifted.
“We’ve seen a favorable change in the weather so we’ll be able to engage more aggressively with our air resources today,” said CalFire information officer Mike Smith. “All of our air resources will be dropping water and fire retardant on the lines.”
However, he said, “the vast majority of the perimeter of this fire remains very dangerous.”
In hilly and rural Lake County, a short drive north of the state’s storied wine country, the ferocity and breakaway speed of the Valley fire stunned veteran firefighters, hampered strategic planning and gave rise to worries that it could be a harbinger of an extended, and unpredictable, fire season in the months ahead.
As of Tuesday morning, the still-raging fire had grown to 67,000 acres and was just 15 percent contained.
“We had a good day yesterday. We saved three of the four houses we were tasked to defend,” said Adam Fisher, an engineer with the Larkspur Fire Department, who spent Monday in the Butte Valley area.
Fisher said there are not enough fire engines. His crew was pulled from three community fire departments in Marin County, reflective of the scramble that took place when the fire erupted Saturday. He himself left his family camp outing to celebrate the birthdays of his children.
“The fuels are crazy dry … but then we are in uncharted territory,” Fisher said.
On Monday, authorities confirmed the death of a woman inside her home. Sheriff’s deputies had found her remains in a charred residence on Cobb Mountain the night before. Officials said there were other individuals unaccounted for.
A seven-mile stretch of Highway 175 connecting Cobb, where the fire originated, to the devastated town of Middletown was a corridor of destruction: blackened, abandoned cars, denuded pine groves, dead animals, gutted houses.
“An extraordinarily hostile fire,” said veteran firefighter Kevin Rosado, who was working near the highway Monday.
Two hundred miles to the east, in Sierra foothill Gold Country, the Butte fire by midday Monday had destroyed 135 homes in Amador and Calaveras counties. Crews had managed to carve out containment lines around a third of the fire, which has placed thousands of residences in peril.
The blaze has scorched through 71,660 acres and was 37 percent contained Tuesday morning.
To the south, the Rough fire burning in the Sequoia National Forest was reported to be 40 percent contained, but it already has devoured 211 square miles and filled the San Joaquin Valley with stifling smoke.
Later in the day, the governor authorized $12.4 million in additional spending to help fight the Lake County and Gold Country fires — and the additional blazes he said were sure to come.
Early morning fog and a thick layer of smoke hugging the rugged terrain Tuesday is expected to delay liftoff for some dozen helicopters waiting outside Lakeport to aid those crews on the ground.
———
©2015 Los Angeles Times
Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
