Some evacuation orders lifted
‘Good progress and good effort overall,’ MCSO reports
Some residents east of Covelo were being allowed back into the area as the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office reduced evacuation orders to warnings for four zones Friday afternoon.
“We’ve got a little bit of good news for folks … because (firefighters) got a lot of really good line in around Lake Pillsbury, which is really good for us because that takes away some of that concern for the Potter Valley/hearst area,” said Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall in his Friday morning update on KYBU Round Valley Radio.
“The weather had been pretty good for us, but of course as soon as this little weather pattern (of higher humidity and lower temperatures) is gone, we could be right back to hot, dry winds.”
Also on Friday morning, Kendall said that hopefully some areas under evacuation orders related to the August Complex fire could begin repopulating, and at noon Sept. 18, the MCSO announced that four zones had been officially downgraded to evacuation warnings.
To explain how large the fire still is, MCSO Lt. Shannon Barney said that Cal Fire reported “dropping a half of a million gallons of retardant on the (August Complex) Thursday, which is an incredible number.”
Barney added that there were “clearer skies” Friday so aircraft could be used to help firefighters on the ground, which he described as “trying to do two things: stop the fire from going north toward the Middle Fork of the Eel River toward Chicken Ridge, and they’re also trying to stop it from getting it up on the top of Sanhedrin and putting our communications site in jeopardy. So there
has been good progress and good effort overall.”
Cal Fire described the August Complex West Zone, which is closest to Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties, as 86,298 acres and 7-percent contained.
The entire August Complex fire was described as 824,118 acres.
The zones that have been reduced from an evacuation order to a warning are: Zone S, south of the County Line, east of Bell Springs Road, north of Bell Springs Creek and west of the North Fork of the Eel River; Zone Q, south of the Mendocino County Line, west and north of the North Fork of the Eel River, north and east of Bald Mountain Road; Zone D: south and east of the Eel River, north of Bentley Basin and west of the National Forest
Boundary; Zone N: north of the Middle Fork of the Eel River including the Eel River Ranger Station and Black Butte Store, west and south of the National Forest Boundary, east of Williams Creek.
Road closures include Hearst-willits Road at the Eel River Bridge and northbound M1, also known as Indian Dick Road, and eastbound FH7 from the Eel River Ranger Station.