Dixie Fire at 500,000 acres scorched

Respite from howling winds has slowed rate of growth to 10,000 acres daily since start of week

Even as the Dixie Fire’s footprint surpassed half a million acres Wednesday, firefighters relished a brief respite from the high winds that had whipped embers of the second-biggest blaze in California history across the remote region and into populated communities.

Outpaced only by last year’s August Complex Fire, which burned more than a million acres, the Dixie Fire had charred 501,008 acres of land and was 30% contained Wednesday morning, according to Cal Fire. Most of its overnight expansion occurred after it jumped containment lines northwest of Chester on the shores of Lake Almanor and to the northeast, moving closer to Janesville.

Still, officials said they were optimistic about the blaze’s slowing rate of growth: It has added just 10,000 acres or so daily since the start of the week after jumping by more than 100,000 acres in 24 hours last Friday. The fire has destroyed more than 1,000 structures, including more than 500 homes, making it the 15th-most-destructive blaze in state history.

Thanks to light winds Sunday through Wednesday, firefighters have been able to beef up containment lines running all along the fire’s western flank, said Cal Fire spokesperson Rick Carhart. Evacuation orders for all communities in Butte County were reduced to warnings Tuesday.

“The growth that we’ve seen has been terrain- and fuels-driven,” Carhart said. “The wind hasn’t really been driving this fire at all.”

That’s a stark contrast from recent fire behavior. Starting the middle of last week, gusts of about 30 to 40 mph whipped across the region, sparking spot fires that quickly exploded and propelling flames past containment lines into unburned islands of vegetation. On Aug. 4, the fire made an unexpected run through the Plumas County town of Greenville, razing most of the town to the ground and horrifying residents from the surrounding Lake Almanor communities.

Over the weekend, how

ever, a thick smoke blanket known as an “inversion” settled over the hardhit area, cutting off sunlight and calming the flames’ erratic behavior during the daytime hours. Smoke blew into the Bay Area and choked the nearby cities of Chico, Redding and Red Bluff.

But a high-pressure ridge moving inland from the Pacific Ocean is expected to bring warmer temperatures into Northern California, said National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Rowe. Across the fire’s footprint, temperatures could range from the 80s to more than 100 degrees in the Feather River Canyon, where the blaze broke out nearly four weeks ago just above the Cresta Dam.

Winds were on average less than 10 mph across the fire region Wednesday — and forecast to remain that way through Saturday — with westerly gusts of about 20 mph traveling from the valley up to mountaintops, Rowe said.

While the stable weather is a boon for firefighting, last week’s gusts weren’t “extraordinarily strong” for this time of year, but they coincided with flames moving through hard-to-reach terrain and extremely dry vegetation that fed the wildfire, Rowe said.

“That goes to show what kind of fire season we’re entering and that the fuels are very dry,” Rowe said.

More than 6,000 personnel are now assigned to the Dixie Fire — about half of all firefighters assigned to blazes in the state. The fire has destroyed 1,045 structures, including 555 residences, and damaged 69 others. Three firefighters have been injured.

The fire’s behavior has been so unruly that Cal Fire scrapped its previous expected containment date and does not currently plan to issue another, Carhart said. On Wednesday, crews planned to clear as much debris as they could from the west shore of Lake Almanor to allow residents to return there as soon as possible.

“Even after the fire’s done spreading and threatening things and destroying things, there’s going to be a lot, a lot, a lot of cleanup,” Carhart said. “It’s going to be a fire for a long time.”