Smoke Thwarts Air Battle Against State’s Worst Fire

WEAVERVILLE, Calif. — A heavy pall of black smoke made it impossible Monday to launch an air-tanker assault or use spotter planes in the battle against what had become the most dangerous of California’s rash of lightning-strike fires.

Some of the estimated 3,000 firefighters thrown into the effort to stop the flames in Shasta and Trinity national forests northwest of Redding were successful in carving firebreaks to end a threat to Weaverville. The inversion layer, however, trapped smoke between the peaks and the valleys, putting aerial operations out of the question.

Smoke was also a major problem in the Klamath National Forest to the north, where firefighters working against the 103,000-acre fire there were forced to use flashlights and truck headlights to read their maps during the day.

With containment lines being expanded around the 125,000-acre cluster of Stanislaus National Forest blazes near Yosemite, the state’s top priority became the Shasta-Trinity fires.

The frazzled crews were battling six clusters or “complexes” of fires that had consumed more than 71,000 acres in and around the Trinity Alps.

The community of Hyampom, on California 299 west of Weaverville, was in danger for a time when two of the more than two dozen fires burning in the area pincered it from north and south. Three barns were lost, but remarkably not a single home. Hyampom was safe by late Monday night.

The Weaverville watershed was threatened, however, and flames were near the Sacramento-to-Eureka power transmission lines, which a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman said were “de-energized.”

Forest Service officials said the highest priority was assigned to the Shasta-Trinity blazes because of the many homes and structures in the area. The worst of those fires was the Limedyke Complex, a series of blazes that had burned 24,000 acres near the town of Hayfork.

Meanwhile, all but about 100 of the nearly 6,000 residents evacuated during the destructive fires in the Stanislaus National Forest returned to their Tuolomne County homes, as officials shifted some of their tired crews and equipment to other fronts.

More than 1,000 of California’s estimated 1,250 lightning-sparked forest fires had been contained after burning nearly 500,000 acres of brush and timber. As many as 3,000 Californians were still being kept from their houses.

The weather continued to cooperate. On Sunday, erratic winds eased and many smaller and medium-size blazes were contained. As a result, closer attention could be paid to those fires still burning unchecked since lightning ignited them last week.

In addition to the Shasta-Trinity blazes, state and federal fire officials were concentrating on another cluster of fires that had burned an estimated 70,000 acres in Mendocino County 150 miles north of San Francisco and several conflagrations that had burned more than 103,000 acres in Klamath National Forest.

The Plumas National Forest fire that endangered the town of Milford was contained, the 20,000-acre Lassen National Forest fire was 90% contained and a fire in Sequoia National Forest was contained, as was yet another that had burned 7,000 acres in Tahoe National Forest, federal and state fire information officials reported.

In Oregon, nearly 105,000 acres had been destroyed by several fires, the largest of which swept across 18,000 acres about 25 miles west of Grant’s Pass and was being allowed to burn in rugged, unpopulated terrain. About 650 members of the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division arrived by charter buses from Ft. Ord and set up camp, ready to aid more than 8,300 civilian firefighters. They are due on the fire lines this morning.

In Idaho, crews brought a 10,500-acre blaze in the Sawtooth National Forest under control Monday, allowing most of 600 firefighters to be reassigned to battles in California and Oregon.

In all, federal officials estimated, about 636,000 acres had burned in California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming.

In Stanislaus National Forest, higher humidity, cooler temperatures and predictable 10 m.p.h. winds allowed the 4,800 firefighters to contain the southern and western flanks of the blaze where most of the county’s residential areas were threatened earlier, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Irl Everest said.

It will be another week before the northeastern part of the Stanislaus Complex fire is contained, Everest said. Moderate southwesterly winds Monday were pushing the fire toward mostly uninhabited parts of Stanislaus National Forest.

Several Weeks

Complete control of the fire could take several weeks, said Dick Wisehart of the U.S. Forest Service. Wisehart added that 15 homes were destroyed in the 173-square-mile blaze.

Hundreds of refugees at Sonora’s Mother Lode Fairgrounds evacuation center cheered and applauded as U.S. Forest Service officials lifted evacuation orders for 12 Tuolumne County communities, reducing the number of residents still in evacuation centers from 1,200 to less than 100. About 250 evacuees had already been allowed to return home on Sunday.

“We’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” said American Red Cross spokeswoman Elizabeth Quirk, explaining that some refugees had not seen their homes for almost a week. “You could already see the change in people when some of them were allowed to go back yesterday.”

Evacuees were elated about the news.

“We’re glad to go home,” said Lionel Washburn, 74, a retired firefighter from Mi-Wuk Village, a small community 10 miles northeast of Sonora. Washburn said he and his wife, Mary, also 74, had been sleeping on Army cots for four nights.

Clean Deck

“We were comfortable, but it’s nice to sleep in a good bed and eat normal meals again,” Washburn said. “The first thing we’re going to do is wash the ashes off the deck. When we left the house they were already an inch thick.”

John Elpetich, 75, a retired tree planter from Sugar Pine, a subdivision just north of Twain Harte, said he stayed home despite voluntary evacuation notices. His wife, Rose, 73, sought refuge with her niece in the nearby town of Sonora Meadows.

“I have been here so long, they can’t get me out of here,” said Elpetich, who planted many of the firs and pines in Stanislaus National Forest as a contractor for the U.S. Forest Service. “It’s a sad story to know so much of those trees have burned. I know the forest like the back of my hand. It’s like raising a child, and now it’s all gone.”

Elpetich said that throughout the evacuation period hot sparks landed on the cedar-shake roof of the couple’s home nestled among 80-foot sugar pines. Before they stopped the Stanislaus Complex fire there, firefighters struggled desperately to keep the flames from jumping the Cottonwood Road, the last access road before the blaze would have advanced rapidly to subdivisions in Sugar Pine, Twain Harte, Mi-Wuk Village and Sierra Village, California Department of Forestry spokesman Kirk Landuyt said. But the fire was contained there by Sunday, Landuyt added.

Everest of the U.S Forest Service said less than 100 people from small communities east of Buck Meadows on California 120 were still under evacuation orders.

Imbert Matthee reported from Sonora, Mark Stein from Weaverville. Also contributing was Jack Jones in Los Angeles.