Thick smoke that had been holding down winds and temperatures in Northern California's picturesque forestlands began to clear Sunday, as firefighters battling the state's largest single blaze braced for a return of fire-friendly weather.
The winds were not predicted to reach the dizzying heights that helped the Dixie Fire grow last week. However, they were alarming for firefighters who were working in extreme conditions to protect thousands of homes that were under threat.
In an online briefing Sunday morning, Mark Brunton, operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said, "The live trees that are out there now have a lower fuel moisture than you would find when you go to a hardware store or a lumber yard and get that piece of lumber that's kiln dried." "It doesn't take much for any kind of embers, sparks, or small flaming front to get that going," he said. The fire, which was fueled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation, engulfed much of Greenville on Wednesday and Thursday, destroying 370 homes and structures and threatening nearly 14,000 in the northern Sierra Nevada.
According to CalFire, the Dixie Fire, named after the road where it started nearly four weeks ago, had grown to 765 square miles (1,980 square kilometers) by Sunday evening and was just 21% contained. It had engulfed an area more than twice the size of New York City in flames.
Crews that had been immediately assaulting the front lines will be forced to retreat and create containment lines farther back as smoke cleared out on the eastern areas of the fire, according to Dan McKeague, a fire information officer from the United States Forest Service. Forest Service is a federal agency that manages forests. Better vision, on the other hand, should let planes and helicopters to return to the fighting and make ground crews' maneuvering safer.
"We can fly again as soon as that air clears," McKeague said.
According to Deputy Incident Commander Chris Waters, crews have built 465 miles (748 kilometers) of line around the huge conflagration. That's around the distance from Chico, California, and Los Angeles, California. Officials, on the other hand, are only convinced that roughly 20% of the line is secure, he claimed.
"Every inch of that line needs to be created, staffed, wiped up, and put to bed before we can call this fire properly contained," Waters said during the incident briefing on Saturday evening.
"Every inch of that line needs to be created, staffed, wiped up, and put to bed before we can call this fire properly contained," Waters said during the incident briefing on Saturday evening.
Strong winds aided in the spread of fires on Sunday. However, beginning Monday, the weather was forecast to improve.
Officials say damage reports are preliminary since assessment teams can't access into many regions.
The fire surpassed last year's Creek Fire in the Central Valley as the state's greatest single fire in recorded history.
It's nearly half the size of the August Complex, a series of lightning-caused 2020 fires that raged across seven counties and are considered California's largest wildfire overall by state officials.
The cause of the fire was being investigated. A tree falling on one of the utility's electrical wires may have ignited the fire, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. On Friday, a federal judge ordered PG&E to provide information regarding the equipment and vegetation that ignited the fire by Aug. 16.
Temperatures exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) instead of the triple-digit highs seen earlier in the week, thanks to cooler temperatures and more humidity.
However, the fire and its adjacent fires, which were only a few hundred miles apart, remained a continuous threat.
"Our hearts break for this town," Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on Twitter after surveying the damage in Greenville on Saturday. "These are climate-induced wildfires, and we have to accept that we have the power in not just the state, but in this country to fix this," Newsom said on CNN.
Heat waves and record droughts linked to climate change have made fighting wildfires in the American West more difficult.
Climate change has made the region significantly warmer and drier in the last 30 years, according to scientists, and will continue to make weather more intense and wildfires more frequent and catastrophic.
Hundreds of homes were endangered by the McFarland and Monument fires, which continued to develop northwest of the Dixie Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The McFarland Fire was about a quarter contained, and the Monument Fire was around 3% contained.
South of the Dixie Fire, crews put out the River Fire, which started near Colfax on Wednesday and destroyed 68 residences.
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