TEHAMA COUNTY – Friday into Saturday morning saw another day of limited spread of the Park Fire.
The fire, which started on July 24 due to an alleged arson incident in Upper Bidwell Park, had grown by 327 acres to a total of 429,135 acres since Friday afternoon’s update, and containment had also increased slightly to 36%.
The fire’s slow growth was due to moderate fire development overnight, which allowed firefighters to establish more containment lines. However, Mill Creek remains a concern for firefighters, as does Doe Mountain and an area near Manton.
“We have this one heavy oil accumulation (near Manton) that’s causing a lot of problems,” said Jeremy Pierce, Cal Fire Operations Director, during Saturday morning’s briefing. “Still, there were some flash fires, but yesterday was a good day. It was really cool. We haven’t had a lot of problems in that area. Not a lot of smoke.”
Pearce said work is ongoing in the Mill Creek area as crews have completed a line down from Rock Gulch to connect to another line.
“Yesterday it was really difficult to get the line in there and put the hose in there, but today it was connected, which is our last step in this whole project in this area,” he said. “Yesterday was a lot of hard work, but still a lot of smoke. There are a lot of obstacles in this area, very rocky terrain, very steep terrain.”
He added that many tree stumps were removed in the area of Highways 36 and 172 on Friday.
“There are a lot of stumps there, a lot of people were there with downed trees. This will continue for the next week or so,” Pierce said.
He reported that there were no wildfires in the L Line area, which was new for the development. Pierce also said cleanup of Wednesday’s 30-acre wildfire near Dye Creek is almost complete.
Changed conditions
As expected, the recovery in relative humidity overnight helped contain fire activity in other fire areas.
“It’s finally starting to get a little cooler and the humidity a little more humid. At the fire boundary, humidity has recovered about 30 to 40% this morning,” said Cal Fire meteorologist Ryan Walbrun. “That’s the best we’ve seen in at least a week. Probably since last Sunday morning.”
He does not expect the fire to break through the inversion layer before 3 p.m. – that is not the case at all.
Fire behavior analyst Jan Smoots urged firefighters to keep a close eye on the Deer Creek area.
“Pay special attention to the Deer Creek watershed,” he said. “It’s still hot there, and if any of that gets through the pipe, we’re going to have big problems.”
A slow cooling trend will begin this weekend and into next week as temperatures drop to near or even a few degrees below seasonal normals. However, southwesterly wind gusts of 20-25 mph forecast for Sunday could test firefighting and containment efforts.
Dusty Martin, one of the emergency managers in Tehama County, stressed in the briefing on Saturday morning that this is a cause for concern and warned against complacency.
“There are some winds coming up tomorrow,” he said. “So we need to get in there and start getting a handle on this and cleaning up as much as we can. We can’t lose the ground that we’ve already done a lot of hard work and paid for up to this point.”
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