Firefighters prep for winds to whip up August Complex Fire in Mendocino, Humboldt counties
Update: Monday, Sept. 14, 9:30 a.m.
As the largest in California history, the August Complex Fire blowing through the North State has consumed 877,477 acres and stands at 28% containment as of Monday in a week punctuating concerns of fire spread with winds predicted to kick up. Firefighters started the week concentrating on the west flank of fire, which is concentrated in federal forestland in Mendocino and Humboldt counties.
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With the West under siege from an unprecedented surge in wildfires, firefighters are hoping to gain the upper hand on the August Complex burning in the North State. At 746,607 acres, it’s become California’s largest wildfire in history.
With a 25% containment as of Friday morning, the fire is burning due east of Laytonville primarily in the Mendocino National Forest. Evacuation warnings have been widespread, covering neighborhoods spanning Mendocino, Lake, Glenn, Tehama and Humboldt counties. At one point, the entire Mendocino County was under evacuation orders from the blaze which started on Aug. 17.
Seven evacuation orders remain in place east of Covelo and another between Willits and Longvale along Highway 101.
“I had a few employees not in today because they had to help relatives evacuate,” Humboldt Distillery founder and President Abe Stevens told the Business Journal Friday from his Fortuna business. The Hopkins Fire, as part of the August Complex, is bearing down on the city of Garberville off Highway 101 in Humboldt County.
“As far as the business goes, I had a little trouble getting delivery in and out of here when the 101 was closed,” he said.
A monster of a pyro complex, the lightning-spawned inferno also consisting of the Willow and Vinegar blazes as well as the multiple fires associated with the Doe blazes has become a federal incident, with the U.S. Forest Service leading the charge. The Doe Fire alone is covering 491,239 acres.
Firefighters can thank the huge number of wildfires for one ironic thing — smoke.
“It’s creating a layer and shading the ground,” Incident Command spokeswoman Kimberly Kaschalk told the Business Journal. “Everybody hates the smoke, but it is truly helping us.”
The smoke-spurred, relative humidity and lack of wind over the last few days has helped firefighters tremendously.
The reprieve in the wind shifting from blowing away from the coast south represents a welcome sign, considering the 30- to 45 mph gusts from a week ago caused much concern — especially for the residents of Covelo and Willits. Ten structures are known to be destroyed from the Doe Fire, with that number expected to climb, she confirmed.
The break in the weather will help an assessment team move in to get a handle on the fire and review the damage.
“Now the winds have died down, and we can safely gauge where the fire is, so we can box it in,” said Kaschalk, who works for the U.S. Dept. of Conservation of Natural Resources in Pennsylvania and is assigned to the fire complex. The battle has even enlisted 200 active-duty soldiers from the U.S. Army.
Extra resources have been brought in from across the nation to assist California with its overwhelming firefight. The battle has involved a Northern Rockies firefighting team from Montana that has all but fully contained the Woodward Fire in Marin County that consumed almost 5,000 acres along the Point Reyes National Seashore as of Friday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Other fires to update include:
-LNU Lightning Complex is made up of the Gamble, Spanish, Markley, Walbridge and Hennessey fires, with the latter two blazes roaring through Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties and destroying 1,491 structures. The 363,220-acre complex stands at 95% containment as well as Marin County’s Woodward blaze.
-Oak Fire, another Mendocino County blaze, has burned 1,100 acres north of Willits and stands at 40% contained with evacuations in place.
The siege is far from over for fire officials keeping the fall in their peripheral vision.
After all, California’s most destructive and deadliest wildfire that killed 85 people and consumed almost 20,000 structures, the Camp Fire, started on Nov. 8. Plus, October has always been a punishing month for firefighting.
Up to this point, 2020 has produced five of the top 20 largest wildfires in California history, mowing over 3.1 million acres, according to Cal Fire. At least 19 fatalities and more than 3,900 structures demolished have been reported by the state.
To date, the state’s fire agency has dispatched 14,800 firefighters to battle 28 major wildfires burning across California. They remain on hard-fought lines in often steep terrain and menacing weather conditions.
The Creek Fire in the Sierra National Forest east of Fresno as even produced a new type of pyro-produced cloud spun out of the fire’s own weather.
The danger remains so high, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Pacific Southwest Regional Forester Randy Moore closed all national Forest Service trails, campgrounds and day-use areas until further notice.
Then, a clear unknown in how Northern California will do leading into the winter lies in a predicted La Nina, a tropical weather phenomenon forming off the shores of South America that brings the opposite dry-to-wet result for both ends of the state, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The San Francisco Bay Area is situated on the cusp of a dividing line that most often delivers wet weather conditions to the Pacific Northwest and dry ones to the south.
