Many blazes still out of control
Brian Hanson of the Clearlake Oaks Cal Fire crew on Tuesday looks out over charred remains of the Walker Fire from Walker Road in eastern Lake County. The crew has been on the fire lines for three days.
JOHN BURGESS/The Press DemocratPublished: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 5:53 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 12:17 p.m.
Out-of-control wildfires continued to scorch Northern California on Monday, as firefighters struggled to gain footholds among more than 800 fires burning from Big Sur to Humboldt County.
In Lake County, a fire on Walker Ridge Road raged without restraint, twice doubling in size to a reported 10,000 acres.
Burning since Sunday afternoon near the Indian Valley Reservoir and Colusa County line, the so-called Walker Fire was not even partially contained Monday night.
Officials refused to release the amount of acreage the fire could grow to, saying the potential would only “alarm the public.”
“It’s not a good situation. It’s too scary,” said Nancy Carniglia, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
In Mendocino County, where 131 fires burned Monday, agencies were forced to focus on blazes threatening homes and businesses and leave the majority of fires in more remote locations burning unattended, said Tracie Boudreaux, another Cal Fire spokeswoman.
A powerful lightning storm sparked the weekend blazes in a total of 842 locations in Northern California.
Thousands of firefighters battled flames on the ground and from the air, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was alarmed by the magnitude of the fires.
Schwarzenegger said he had enlisted the help of firefighters from Nevada and Oregon, “because you can never prepare for 500 or 700 or 800 fires all at the same time.”
By Monday morning, smoke from the fires had clouded Northern California’s skies, and health officials warned people to stay indoors, particularly at night.
Even in Santa Rosa, where the nearest fires were more than 60 miles away, young soccer players were kept inside when practices were cancelled, and dog owners curtailed walks with their pets.
For residents of several hundred homes in Mendocino, Napa, Solano and Lake counties who were evacuated over the weekend and Monday, the question of when they might return was met with uncertainty, Carniglia said.
“All we know is ‘not yet,’ ” she said.
At the Walker fire in Lake County, one of the state’s largest blazes, light winds were pushing the fire through dry vegetation, Carniglia said. Voluntary evacuations were in place at two ranches, and homes in Wilbur Hot Springs and the Spring Valley subdivision, west of the fire, were on alert for evacuations, Carniglia said.
Eighty-five firefighters, nine engines and four bulldozers were fighting the blaze Monday, while the majority of the area’s resources were diverted to a 4,089-acre fire that originated in Napa County and is now being fought in Solano County.
That fire, dubbed by officials the Wild fire and located northeast of Napa and northwest of Fairfield, started Saturday and was 60 percent contained by 7 p.m. Monday. The fire was being fought by 438 firefighters with 41 engines Monday.
About 125 homes are threatened and under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders.
Other residents have been allowed back into their neighborhoods, Carniglia said.
Voluntary evacuations were also ordered for dozens of rural homes in Mendocino County possibly threatened by at least two of the many fires burning there.
West of Boonville, 20 homes on Mountain View Road clustered around mile marker nine could be in the path of the Jacks fire, said Boudreaux. A 200-acre fire near Orr Springs Road west of Ukiah also prompted some evacuations.
Some of the other larger Mendocino County fires are the Navarro fire, 1,400 acres, 15 percent contained; Cherry fire, 50 acres, 50 percent contained; Foster fire, 50 acres, 50 percent contained; Table Mountain fire, 800 acres, 30 percent contained; Mallo Pass fire, 800 acres; and Juan Creek fire, 100 acres.
Elsewhere in California, a fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, about 160 miles north of Sacramento, threatened about 1,200 homes; a 2,000-acre wildfire burning in the Los Padres National Forest south of Big Sur forced evacuations of 75 homes and businesses, destroyed one house and threatened hundreds of others; and a second fire in Los Padres burned more than 57,000 acres and has injured nine firefighters.
Wildfires have destroyed more than 175 homes in Northern California so far this year.
Blazes started popping up in the region just as California’s unofficial fire season began in mid-May, following the state’s driest two-month period on record.
“My hat is off to all the firefighters out there on the ground, dirty, hot, smoky,” said Del Walters, assistant Cal Fire regional chief. “And it’s going to be a long road for us.”
You can reach Staff Writer Laura Norton at 521-5220 or laura.norton@pressdemocrat.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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