Firefighters continued their battle Saturday against fast-moving blazes that have thrived in the sweltering heat gripping the state and devoured tens of thousands of acres of parched vegetation.
Across Amador and Calaveras counties, nearly 3,300 fire personnel battled the Butte fire that began southeast of Sacramento and has plowed through nearly 65,000 acres. Swift and stubborn, it began Wednesday, doubled in size the following night, then doubled again the next day, prompting California Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency.
Residents of about 6,000 homes in California’s Gold Country have evacuated the threatened lands, defined by craggy terrain, desiccated timber and limited road access. The elements, along with high temperatures and low humidity, have created an intense environment where trees catch fire and cinder flies into the air, causing new flares to ignite among the pines, redwoods and sequoias.
“If a tree torches, the fire from the tree will send embers up the hill or across a ravine or across a ridge top. That starts another fire and then often the main head of the fire catches up with that,” said Lynne Tolmachoff, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
She said the Butte fire has the same tendencies as the Rocky fire, a perplexing blaze that began in July in a rugged region north of Napa and rapidly swept across three counties before it was knocked down.
Saturday afternoon, firefighters were dealing with new flames that broke out near where the Rocky fire had burned. Evacuations were ordered in Lake County after the Valley fire, which began near the community of Cobb, burned 400 acres in less than three hours. It grew to about or 10,000 acres in just a few hours, said Daniel Berlant of the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Its cause is unknown.
Four firefighters suffered burn injuries battling the blaze. They were taken to a burn center, and their conditions were not immediately known.
Officials hoped an expected drop in temperature, even if slight, would aid the firefighters’ faceoff with the Butte fire, which has destroyed 15 structures and threatened 6,400 others. Assessment teams began to evaluate the damage Saturday, when the fire was 10 percent contained. No injuries have been reported, and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
To the south, in the Sierra Nevada, another fire has burned for six weeks and chewed through more than 128,000 acres in an area that includes Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks.
Firefighters combating the Rough fire have been forced to deal with long and cavernous canyons that are difficult to scale and that tend to funnel and accelerate the wind, spreading the fire rapidly, said Paul Garnier, a spokesman for the fire’s incident management team. A bark beetle infestation that has killed pine trees in the area has added fuel to an already dehydrated landscape.
Garnier said nearly 2,600 firefighters have successfully pushed the fire, sparked by lightning, toward McKenzie Ridge, east of Highway 180, where they hope it will be stopped by containment lines. By Saturday afternoon it was 29 percent contained.
Garnier said giant sequoias actually rely on fire as part of a healthy ecosystem, because blazes clear out debris and help the trees germinate.
