Inferno is now 10% contained
In Siskiyou County, fire officials say that they still `have a lot more to accomplish'
Though fire continued the McKinney to grow slowly Thursday in Siskiyou County, firefighters were reporting progress as they began to rack up some containment on the state's largest wildfire.
As of Thursday morning, the blaze — which was 10% contained — had scorched more than 58,600 acres in the Klamath National Forest near the border of California and Oregon, accord- ing to Cal Fire. Authorities have reported that four peo- ple have been found dead in the burn zone, surpassing the total death toll of Cal- ifornia's 2021 fire season, which saw three deaths.
During a community meeting Wednesday night, Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray A. Haupt lauded the effort of firefighters battling the blaze.
“They're making pretty short work of a monster of a fire,” Haupt said.
Strong storms that brought heavy rainfall over the area earlier this week were a mixed blessing for those battling the massive blaze. On the one hand, temperatures briefly cooled down, allowing firefighters to establish some containment lines and leading law enforcement in the area to allow some residents to return home. But at the same time, the rainfall further complicated efforts to contain flames on certain por- tions of the fire's northeast- ern flank.
The monsoonal storms that rolled through the area earlier this week dropped no more than a tenth of an inch of rain over most of the burn area. However, 2.5-3 inches of rain fell along the fire's eastern edge — causing debris flows down Humbug Creek, officials said.
So much rain over a short amount of time does little to help trees weakened by drought because the water has little time to soak into the dry timber, according to fire behavior analyst Dennis Burns. It would have been more beneficial for the firefight to see 1 inch of rain over three days than 3 inches of rain in one day, Burns said at a Thursday morning briefing. “For those heavy fuels — that rain made no effect on it,” he said.
Thanks to containment lines put in just north of the cities of Yreka and Hawkinsville, authorities Wednesday reduced the evacuation orders within parts of those cities to warnings.
Still, residents in those warning zones were instructed to remain alert.
“We all saw how fast the fire grew on the first night, and we want to be prepared if that happens again,” Yreka Police Chief Mark Gilman wrote in a letter to residents. “We are not out of the woods yet, but we might be close.”
Although the rainfall briefly helped to reduce flames, fire officials warned that as temperatures warmed up and humidity dropped, fuels will dry out rapidly, causing fire activity to ramp up again.
“We're happy to have that (containment) line in,” Forest Services spokesperson Mike Lindbery said Thursday morning, “but we have a lot more to accomplish before we feel totally good on that.”
Meanwhile, another blaze burning in Klamath National Forest — the Yeti fire — prompted new evacuation orders Thursday in an area east of Happy Camp, a community along the Highway 96 corridor in Siskiyou County.
The Yeti fire stood at 4,626 acres on Thursday and threatened more than 300 structures. It had more than doubled in size in the 48 hours leading up to Thursday.