Dixie Fire rages as red flag warning conditions persist
The Caldor Fire, burning in the Eldorado National Forest, dominated news into Wednesday as it exploded nearly nine times in size. But the red flag conditions that propelled the Caldor Fire’s growth had a similar effect on other Northern California blazes, including the Dixie Fire, California’s second-largest of all time.
Gusty conditions caused the Dixie Fire to grow more than 30,000 acres between Tuesday and Wednesday. The month-old blaze now spans 635,728 acres (993 square miles) — the size of Sacramento County. Thousands of personnel are battling the wildfire as it burns primarily in Butte, Plumas and Lassen counties.
Crews were able to push containment to 33% Wednesday morning, up 2 percentage points from the previous day. Officials partially credit a smoke cover from wildfires further north, which helped keep fire activity from exploding at the Dixie Fire Tuesday even as sustained winds hit the blaze.
“We got lucky yesterday,” said incident meteorologist Joe Goudsward in a Wednesday morning incident briefing. “There’s no way to sugarcoat that. Between the Monument Fire, the McCash Fire and the McFarland
Fire we got (smoked) out, and that kind of kept the lid on everything.”
Fire behavior analyst Brian Newman warned that a shift in winds Wednesday could expose new fuel that would allow the fire to grow even more rapidly than before. A red flag warning remains in place for the west zone of the fire for the duration of the day Wednesday, with winds forecast to reach up to 30 mph.
But in what appeared to be a positive sign, officials lifted a large number of evacuation orders midday Wednesday across Plumas and Tehama counties, allowing some residents to return home for the first time in a month. Areas such as Chester, West Almanor, the Almanor Peninsula and Hamilton Branch are now under an evacuation warning, rather than an order.