Creek Fire’s cause remains undetermined, officials say

Federal officials said Friday they could not make an official determination about what caused last year’s Creek Fire, a monstrous blaze that chewed up nearly 380,000 acres in the mountains northeast of Fresno and became the largest fire to burn in the Sierra Nevada.

Despite a monthslong investigation, the U.S. Forest Service said the cause of the conflagration that started in the Sierra National Forest will officially go down as “undetermined,” though the agency said “the most probable cause was a lightning strike.”

“We all want to know a definitive cause to what started the devastating Creek Fire last year,” said Dean Gould, forest supervisor of the Sierra National Forest, in a statement. “Investigators spent countless hours hiking rugged terrain to determine the cause, interviewed numerous leads and eliminated multiple potential causes,” including power

lines, campfire embers and fireworks.

Arson, however, was not categorically ruled out.

The Creek Fire ignited on the evening of Sept. 4, 2020, in the Big Creek drainage between the popular vacation destinations of Shaver Lake and Huntington Lake. Fueled by thick timber, dried by drought and rising temperatures, the fire toppled hundreds of cabins and rural homes in several small mountain communities in Fresno County. In total, 853 structures were destroyed.

The blaze, which threw up a giant pyrocumulonimbus cloud and generated its own windy weather, marked one of the increasing number of megafires in the West that have challenged firefighters. Fire experts say California is likely to see more of these big fires.

The Creek Fire stands as the fourthlargest in modern California history, with three others that burned last year also among the top five. More than 4.1 million acres were charred in the state in 2020, more than double the previous record of acreage burned, set two years earlier.

Fire experts attribute the more numerous big fires to decades of fire suppression, which has created a dangerous accumulation of brush and trees, as well as the higher temperatures associated with climate change.

The Creek Fire was not fully contained until Christmas Eve of 2020.