Forest Fires California

Three of five forest fires in California's mountain ranges were reported contained Friday, but officials predicted that fire danger will remain high throughout the holiday weekend. A fire in Kings River Canyon east of Fresno was contained Friday morning at 2,000 acres, while one near Mariposa was contained after blackening just under 500 acres, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Harley Greiman said. A fire near Burney in Shasta County was contained on Thursday at 3,000 acres.

Ten days after the official end of the fire season was declared in Northern California, crews were battling a blaze that broke out Saturday along Interstate 80 east of here. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Nancy Picker said firefighters were counting on a storm to help put out the blaze, which had grown to 75 to 100 acres by late Saturday afternoon. No homes were threatened, and all four lanes of the interstate remained open.

"It was like being on top of the world," Becky Konrath said of the Water Witch cabin two miles from the Duck Wall lookout tower in Stanislaus National Forest, a home she had shared with Bob Moss and her 10-year-old daughter since April. The two-bedroom homestead, hand-built from natural stone by the ranch owner who leased it to them, looked out over the San Joaquin Valley.

Warren Alford watched in disbelief as the wildfire billowed up a wooded river gorge toward his family's 300-acre homestead. This is it, he figured. The century-old barn, the placid meadow and generations of memories seemed as fragile as a sandcastle at high tide. Down on the front line, Keith Larkin had even bigger worries.

A plague of fire continued its unchecked course through the brush and timberland of California on Friday, driving at least 15,000 people from their homes, blackening nearly 600 square miles of watershed and closing campgrounds to Labor Day vacationers. The largest fire, a 100,000-acre blaze threatening the Tuolumne City and Groveland communities, was still out of control and moving in the direction of Yosemite National Park, where a separate fire was already burning near Cherry Creek.

A forest fire that forced evacuation of two campgrounds and briefly threatened expensive resort homes in the town of Mammoth Lakes was fully contained Sunday afternoon, after blackening more than 500 acres of timberland and injuring two firefighters.

After a week of battling a 4,459-acre forest fire, nearly half the firefighters had gone home Saturday. The blaze was fully contained and was expected to be out by Monday. Wind gusts up to 25 mph continued to concern the 1,033 firefighters remaining over the weekend, said a spokeswoman for the Susanville Interagency Fire Center. The fire, which began May 27, has cost $4.4 million in firefighting expenses and destroyed $2.5 million worth of timber.

A force of 1,880 firefighters reached full containment Tuesday night over a fire that burned 3,460 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest. Control was expected by early Thursday, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Allen Spencer. A discarded cigarette was listed as the likely cause of the blaze that started midday Monday in Jupiter, a lightly populated residential area about 10 miles east of Sonora.

Firefighters surrounded a rare January wildfire Thursday that blackened 180 acres of brush and timber parched by the drought in the Mendocino National Forest. "Having a fire in January is almost unheard of," U.S. Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said. "If we get back to a regular winter weather pattern, this will be just an unfortunate blip on the screen. But there's no question that if we do not start getting a lot of rain we're in for a very, very dangerous fire season," he said.

A 2,550-acre fire west of Yosemite National Park was declared contained, but it will take another day to fully control the blaze, U.S. Forest Service officials said. Forest Service spokesman Dick Wisehart estimated the cost of suppressing the fire at $933,000. About 760 firefighters are still at the scene of the fire near El Portal, a town about 15 miles west of Yosemite Valley. The fire began Saturday when someone set off an illegal bottle rocket in the Stanislaus National Forest.

As smoke again filled Yosemite Valley last week, a team of fire managers gathered in a cabin to discuss strategy. Sipping a brown sludge resembling coffee, team members took turns talking about the weather and the previous day's fire crew "casualties" of the cook's latest stab at cooking. By the time the meeting ended, a few ticks after 6:30 a.m., consensus had been reached on how best not to fight the wildfire creeping through the park's southern wilderness.

An ashen landscape scrolled by below a California Air National Guard Blackhawk helicopter as it broke through a plum-colored pall hanging over the Sierra. The 11,500-acre Creek fire, the largest in a prematurely busy season of forest blazes, had virtually disappeared. Its walls of orange flames tamed to wan puffs of smoke from hidden embers creeping below the chaparral and pines. Residents of Tuolumne and Mariposa counties, ordered out only days before, cautiously headed back to their homes.

After a week of battling a 4,459-acre forest fire, nearly half the firefighters had gone home Saturday. The blaze was fully contained and was expected to be out by Monday. Wind gusts up to 25 mph continued to concern the 1,033 firefighters remaining over the weekend, said a spokeswoman for the Susanville Interagency Fire Center. The fire, which began May 27, has cost $4.4 million in firefighting expenses and destroyed $2.5 million worth of timber.

Firefighters hoped that a burnout would limit the spread of two lightning-ignited blazes that have charred more than 16,000 acres. Air tankers dropped fire retardant in Los Padres National Forest--which stretches from Ventura County to San Luis Obispo County--to extend containment lines, the U.S. Forest Service said. The fires have burned at least 16,223 acres in the forest since a lightning storm Sept. 8. They were only 12% contained Saturday.

Weary firefighters set raging backfires Wednesday in an effort to stem the advance of flames that have spread for five days through rugged mountain and desert terrain in San Bernardino County. Despite their efforts, the West's largest wildfire continued to expand after blackening more than 60,000 acres of chaparral and timber in the high desert and the San Bernardino Mountains. At least a dozen homes and 50 outbuildings have been damaged or destroyed.

The West's largest wildfire burned out of control in San Bernardino County on Tuesday, spreading in all directions despite the efforts of more than 1,400 firefighters. Kristel Johnson, a spokeswoman for the U.S.

Firefighters beaten back by intense heat from flames feeding on tinder-dry hillsides regrouped Friday for another attempt to encircle a 3,000-acre brush and timber fire in California's Sequoia National Park. Fire crews set backfires in hopes of completing the containment line on the eastern side of the 5-day-old fire in the high country wilderness 45 miles southeast of Fresno, officials said. The firefighters were forced to retreat several hundred yards earlier in the face of intense flames.

After nearly a week of battling wildfires across several Northern California counties, firefighters finally began getting the upper hand Friday, aided by the absence of new lightning strikes that had ignited many of the blazes several days ago. "We've made progress," said Jolene DeGroot, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, noting that firefighters were close to containment on the 10 major blazes still burning in Northern California.

A brush fire fueled by warm temperatures was partially contained but it continued to spread rapidly through the Los Padres National Forest, consuming more than 3,500 acres by Sunday evening. About 700 firefighters battled the flames in dry grassland and chaparral about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, said Earl Clayton, spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. The fire had been about 15% contained, but firefighters lost ground by Sunday evening, said U.S.