At least four firefighters were injured last week on Monday, the fire department said.
One firefighter who barely fights content green fire in Shasta Trinity National Forest suffered blunt instrument trauma while working on the fire line on Saturday, said Deanna Younger, a spokesman for California’s Interagency Management Team 10.
Another firefighter suffered a heat-related injury on Sunday, she said. Both were treated in hospital and released.
Two firefighters fighting the Orleans complex — two flames burning in Del Norte and sister counties have also been hit by fever in recent temperatures above 110 degrees, said Paul Mesnalich, a spokesman for the multi-agency team that coordinates response to those fires.
“Everyone is very careful about the heat effect,” Meznarich said. “Everything is taken into consideration, everyone manages the heat well.”
Although it has been scorching around 20,000 acres of forest for those fighting the flames since July 1st, the conditions have been extremely difficult, firefighters said. The remote area is steep, thick and permeable, and has dry bones.
“It’s very dry right now and we’re still around 100 degrees,” Young said of the green fire area on Monday morning. “We’re not getting a good humidity recovery at night.
The green fire burning on the east side of Lake Shasta, near the Pitt River between Interstate 5 and Highway 299, was lit by lightning in the evening of July 1st, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
It burned 11,643 acres, including 5% as of Monday afternoon.
On July 1st and 2nd, more than 3,100 lightning bolts were discovered in the Shasta Trinity National Forest. This caused over two dozen fires. Most of them were small, and according to the Forest Service, “firemen placed throughout the forest quickly disappeared in anticipation of wildfires caused by lightning strikes.
“The Forest Service was able to catch all of them except this,” Young said of the Green Fire. “That’s because this is very inaccessible.”
Firefighters take their boats to more accessible areas and climb in gear to access areas that are not reachable by cars or feet. Fighting the flames is complicated by the thick wooden canopy and the inability to reach the water to the fire burning in the vegetation near the ground, she added.
The plane also failed to fly in the heavy smoke, firefighters said.
As of Monday, more than 1,400 firefighters had been assigned to the flames. Two so-called superscooper planes, each capable of holding 1,600 gallons of water, arrived from Canada on Sunday, according to the Forest Service.
Super Scoopers, which require a mile of open water to refill their onboard tanks, are expected to use multiple arms from Lake Shasta.
“The physics involved in a contest between fully loaded planes and recreational vessels is unfortunate at best,” the Forest Service said in a statement urging sailors to avoid areas where fire aircraft are operating.
On the west, two fires – the butler and the Red Fire – were managed by the same incident command team as the so-called Orleans complex fire.
The Butler fire reported in the lightning bolts on July 3 burned about 8,156 acres in the Six Rivers and Klamath National Forest, and was completely restrained as of Monday afternoon, Maznarich said.
The fire was burning between the small town of Orleans and the salmon fork, the latter receiving an evacuation warning on Monday.
It was burning in the footsteps of the 2024 Boise Fire, the 2020 Salmon Fire and the 2013 Butler Fire, according to the Forest Service.
Firefighters patrol the boats had kept the fire from jumping over the Salmon River because the area to the east had not been burning recently and there was dense vegetation.
The 116 acres of red fire, which contained 50%, was burning in the wilderness of the sisters in Del Norte County, Maznarich said. It began on July 6th.
Source link
