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For those planning on traveling this weekend, the following is the most current list of closures as of early Saturday morning.
– Route 299: Closed from 11.9 miles west of Junction City to Junction City in Trinity County; intermittent one-way controlled traffic at various locations from two miles west to two mile east of Ingot in Shasta County. Highway 299 has numerous wildfires burning near the highway, 15 miles east of Redding and 10 miles east of Burney in Shasta County. One-way traffic control will be in effect when needed to clear road of debris. Motorists should expect delays due to the fire.
– Route 36: Closed from the junction of Highway 3 in Trinity County to 32 mile west of Red Bluff in Tehama county in Tehama County is currently closed 30 miles west of Red Bluff to the junction of Route 3 in Trinity County.
– Highway 32: One-way traffic control from 12 miles to 7 miles west of the junction of Highway 36 in Tehama County due to fire and emergency equipment in the area. Motorists should expect delays when using this route.
– Highway 70: Closed from 7.6 miles west of Pulga in Butte County to the junction of Route 89, 10 miles west of Quincy in Plumas County to Big Bend Road in Butte County. There is no estimated time to reopen.
– Highway 96: Closed from 14 miles east of the Humboldt/Siskiyou County line to 18 miles west of Happy Camp in Siskiyou County due to a wildfire burning along the highway. There is no detour available and no estimated time to reopen the highway.
Motorists should watch for emergency equipment and personnel. Be advised that roads can close at anytime if conditions change.
For the most up-to-date highway conditions, call Caltrans' highway information line at 1-800-427-7623 or visit the Caltrans Web site at www.dot.ca.gov.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
WALKER RIDGE – Fire investigators have concluded that a vehicle was the cause of the Walker Fire, which on Thursday had reached 50-percent containment while making no additional gains in acreage.
Cal Fire Division Chief Dan Sendek said late Thursday that the Walker Fire was still at 14,500 acres in size, located mostly in remote wildland areas about 14 miles east of Clearlake Oaks.
The fire is expected to be fully contained by Saturday, Sendek said.
Originally, it was thought that the Walker Fire was one of hundreds of fires caused by lightning storms last weekend.
However, Sendek said it was sparked when metal – likely on the undercarriage or other metal part on the underside of a vehicle – scraped a rock.
In one day, the fire's containment grew significantly, from 10 to 50 percent containment, which Sendek credited to a lot of bulldozer work over the previous 24 hours, with 31 bulldozers on scene.
The winds were pushing the fire in a north northwest direction, said Sendek.
"With the continuing wind patterns, it doesn't appear to be a direct threat to Spring Valley," he said.
Nor was it a threat to Wilbur Springs, were residents had returned.
Cal Fire reported that residents were being allowed to return to the Double Eagle Ranch subdivision east of Clearlake Oaks, where evacuations had taken place last Sunday.
Sendek said the biggest concern for the Walker Fire was not a wind switch but rather unstable weather, with the possibility of thunder storms in the coming days.
Also on Thursday, the number of firefighting personnel on scene jumped from 592 the day before to 758 – of which 487 were with Cal Fire – with more hand crews arriving, said Sendek.
Late Thursday afternoon, along Walker Ridge Road, a few miles from where it turns to go toward Bartlett Springs, hand crews and bulldozer operators were at work on the steep hillsides, their work difficult to see from the road because of the thick pall of smoke that hung over the hills and valleys.
With the Walker Fire now nearing containment, firefighters and other personnel – including Sendek – are being demobilized and sent to other fires. "We're keeping what we need but not a person more," he said.
Personnel from the Walker Fire are being sent to areas including Butte and Shasta counties, where the fires are threatening communities, said Sendek.
"The big push is on the valley," he said, where the north wind is kicking up and more storms also are expected in the coming days.
Asked how the public can help the firefighting effort, Sendek said the main thing they wanted was the continued support of residents, and that donations were not necessary.
National Forest fires still growing
While the Walker Fire appears to be winding down, lightning-caused fires in the Mendocino National Forest's Upper Lake Ranger District are continuing to grow.
Forest officials reported that four large fires on the Upper Lake District had been broken out from the 49 others on the forest, and are being managed by the Northern Rockies Interagency Incident Management Team.
The fires, located about 15 miles northeast of Upper Lake, include the Big, 850 acres; the Back, 1,800 acres; the Mill, 400 acres; and the Monkey Rock, 450 acres. Thirty structures are threatened, two have been destroyed.
Those fires, referred to as the Soda Complex, total 3,500 acres and are 5-percent contained. Another 385 acres are burning elsewhere in the forest, officials reported. Of the 495 personnel fighting those fires, 412 are committed to the Soda Complex.
The situation also is worsening in neighboring Mendocino County, where 72 fires are actively burning in the Mendocino Lightning Complex, according to county and state officials.
The fires have burned 27,000 acres and are only 5-percent contained, with numerous communities under evacuation warnings and 900 residences threatened, officials reported.
Calculating costs and damages
The total cost to fight the Walker Fire is estimated at $1.3 million, compared to $4.7 million for Mendocino County's fires. Sendek said the money to fight the fires comes from the state's Emergency Fund.
Only a hunting cabin in Benmore Canyon, where the fire began, was lost, officials reported.
The Woodland-based Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, which operates Indian Valley Reservoir, suffered some losses, said General Manager Tim O'Halloran.
The district has a communications tower on Walker Ridge that links it to the reservoir as well as Cache Creek Dam. "On Sunday night, that was overtaken by the fire and all the equipment on it was destroyed," he said.
The equipment destroyed included solar panels, radios, antennas, cabling and a backup generator, he said. They're now working to replace what was lost, and are using temporary satellite service in the meantime.
Damage is estimated at around $75,000, he said, which could double if the communications tower's structural integrity was compromised by the heat.
The fire reached Indian Valley Reservoir, said O'Halloran, where the district temporarily shut down the campground until the situation is stabilized.
O'Halloran said Cal Fire protected the district's water tanks and structures at the campground, including the hold damtender's residence. "The fire got right up to the campground but didn't enter it."
The district worked with Monte Winters, a Lake County Office of Emergency Services liaison who lives in Spring Valley. O'Halloran said Winters kept the district up to date on the fire situation.
O'Halloran said the district was concerned that the fire might reach its hydroelectric plant and a transmission line that goes over the hill to a Pacific Gas and Electric substation. "We were concerned about losing that in the fire," he said.
On Tuesday, district officials shut the power plant off manually due to concerns the fire might reach it, which he said could cause the plant's two operating turbines to trip offline. That, in turn, could have shut off the district's 250 cubic feet per second water release, which could have disrupted water delivery to its water customers.
O'Halloran said Cal Fire allowed district staff into the area to turn off the power and shift the water being released to another outlet.
In the end, the district didn't lose any power lines, nor was service to its water users interrupted, O'Halloran said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The message from the chiefs and the Air Quality Management District comes a day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the same request, asking California residents not to buy even safe and sane fireworks this year because of the fire danger, according to a Sacramento Bee report.
With the resource demand of fire agencies depleted, any additional wildfires – even if they are small – will overburden firefighters and further degrade local air quality, they reported.
The statement put out by the fire and air quality officials Thursday urged county residents to enjoy the county's many larger fireworks shows that are conducted in a fire-safe manner – over the lake and far from personal exposure to individuals.
Safe and sane or personal fireworks only are allowed to be used or sold within the city of Lakeport and are illegal in all other parts of the county and the city of Clearlake, fire officials reported.
City Manager Jerry Gillham said they are moving ahead with allowing several nonprofit groups to have fireworks booths in the city this year.
Lakeport Fire Chief Ken Wells said safe and sane fireworks are an issue because many people purchase them and then take them outside of the city limits.
“Safe and sane fireworks will still start fire in grasslands,” he said.
He added that the fireworks need to stay within Lakeport's city limits, where they can be displayed in certain areas.
Wells noted that fines for illegal fireworks usage are going up.
On Wednesday California State Fire Marshal Kate Dargan issued a statement in which she put illegal fireworks traffickers on notice. "Consider this your first and only warning,” she said. “We don't care if you do it for fun or profit ... We are determined to put a stop to it.”
Illegal fireworks in California include sky rockets, bottle rockets, Roman candles, aerial shells, firecrackers and other miscellaneous types of fireworks that either explode, go up in the air, or move about the ground in an uncontrollable fashion, according to Dargan's statement. Any device that has not been classified as "Safe and Sane" ("State-Approved") in California is deemed by law to be "dangerous" and "illegal."
She said that Senate Bill 839, which became effective Jan. 1, increased the penalties for illegal fireworks while also removing a number of legal, procedural and practical hurdles to enforcing illegal fireworks statutes in the state.
SB 839 – whose supporters included the California State Firefighters Association, California Fire Chiefs Association and Cal fire – can raise the fines for illegal fireworks, depending on the gross weight of the fireworks found to be in a suspect's possession, to as much as $50,000 and/or not more than 1 year imprisonment in a state prison or county jail, according to Dargan.
In addition, parents may be held liable for any fire damage or injury caused by their children using illegal fireworks, Dargan reported.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The National Weather Service in Sacramento has issued a special weather statement for Lake County forecasting an upper level flow to move up from Southern California some time Friday into Saturday, which should help clear out some of the smoke filling the Clear Lake basin.
However, the flow may just exchange the current smoke with smoke from other nearby fires.
But more troubling is the threat of thunderstorms to return to the surrounding mountains starting on Friday.
With 54 fires started by lightning strikes in the Mendocino National Forest last weekend, the National Weather Service forecast for more storms with limited moisture is not welcome news, although moisture with these storms should increase through the day on Saturday.
Nighttime thunderstorms are a possibility through the weekend for most of Northern California, where fires are still raging – many of them unattended – according to the National Weather Service.
To track lightning strikes, visit http://www.sloweather.com/lightning.htm.
E-mail Terre Logsdon at
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports