The Blue Cut Fire is now 89 percent contained, and all mandatory evacuation orders for the residents of the Cajon Pass have been lifted, officials said.
Advertisement
A major wildfire is threatening nearly 2,000 structures in central California’s San Luis Obispo County.
Hearst Castle was closed over the weekend, though officials said Sunday that the fire was growing in the opposite direction of the popular tourist attraction built by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.
“A fire has never come this close before”, state parks supervising ranger Robert Chambers told the Associated Press.
Having so many people stay behind when asked to leave does ratchet up the risk to firefighters and residents, but on this fire, at least, no ill effects resulted, said Rocky Opliger, incident commander heading up the Southern California Interagency Incident Command Team 4. The fire was noteworthy for its rapid expansion and reportedly unusual ferocity by firefighters on the front lines of the inferno. After returning home from a rushed evacuation that turned out to be unnecessary, Coffey said he found a note from fire crews assigned to protect his home that they had put his “food back into your fridge”.
Milloy said crews are operating on very little sleep as Cal Fire resources are stretched throughout the state battling nine separate large fires.
Moving with lightning speed in its early stages, the fire forced more than 82,000 people to evacuate and destroyed more than 300 buildings, 105 of which were homes.
“The managers are going to have to make hard decisions when we get into the scenario”, he said. Persons who are interested in donating items to sell in order to benefit this cause can drop them off at Sunshine Haven Wildlife Rescue, 2594 Harrison Street in Riverside, Monday through Friday of this week between 10:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. The fire has been burning for a month and has consumed some 87,000 acres north of Big Sur.
Every year, the US Forest Service is allocating more and more of its budget to wildfires – money meant to reduce the likelihood of wildfires is actually being used to fight them. People will likely see smoke and falling ash in Santa Barbara, Montecito and Carpinteria over the next several days, fire officials said.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office says a total of 11 structures have been destroyed, a figure that includes homes, garages and outbuildings.
More than 2,100 firefighters continue to fight the Soberanes fire. Containment was listed at 35 percent.
In addition to the six major wildfires in California, about 250 new conflagrations ignited last week, but firefighters were able to contain them to small acreage, Berlant said.
Several other fires in central California have burned tens of thousands of acres of brush and prompted evacuations of campgrounds and recreation areas.
Advertisement
This article was originally published at 9:50 a.m.
