The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Firefighters see progress in battle with fire
LAKE ELSINORE, CALIF. — Firefighters made significant progress overnight against the Holy fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest near Lake Elsinore, raising the fire’s containment to 29 percent, officials said Saturday.
The fire has been burning along inaccessible ridges and mountains in Orange and Riverside counties since Monday, chewing through bone-dry chaparral, short grass and brush that have not burned in decades.
As of Saturday morning, the Holy fire — named for Holy Jim Canyon Road, near where the fire got its start — had burned 21,473 acres and 12 structures, officials said. A damage assessment team was working in the fire area Saturday to determine whether more structures had been damaged or destroyed, Nguyen said.
Residents, who had evacuated the McVicker Canyon neighborhood just east of Cleveland National Park, returned Saturday morning to find that firefighters, and a few homeowners who stayed behind, had saved their homes.
“Thank you is not enough for these firemen,” said Minnie Gaucin, who watched the Thursday afternoon drama on a surveillance camera feed from her sister’s house in Temecula, as firefighters used hoses and hand tools to save her home.
“They were back in our yard putting the fire out, four or five firemen” Gaucin said. “I was watching my own home. On my phone. The flames were very high. I started crying. I wanted my home to be safe.”
On Saturday she found there was no damage, “just ashes everywhere.” High temperatures, steep terrain and dry grasses and other fuels on the mountains have made firefight- ing difficult, said Thanh Nguyen, a public informa- tion officer for an incident management team assigned to the fire.
Thunderstorms, soaring temperatures, gusty winds and dry conditions were expected this weekend, creating a period of “near critical fire weather,” officials said in a news release.