Crews Hold Plumas Blaze; Smoke Persists Over Valley
By Ryan Lillis, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Sep. 11–Firefighters in Plumas County made good progress Monday against the Moonlight fire, a blaze that has expanded to more than 63,000 acres and continues to send a blanket of smoke above the Sacramento region.
Light winds in the region allowed firefighters to battle back against the fire in places where it had expanded in recent days, said Ron DeHart, a spokesman with the U.S. Forest Service.
While not as severe as it had been, the wind out of the north was strong enough to send smoke high into the atmosphere above Sacramento on Monday afternoon. With cooler weather expected, however, air officials said that today would not be a “Spare the Air” day.
“At least at the ground level, (the smoke) shouldn’t cause any health problems,” said Christina Ragsdale, a spokeswoman with the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, “But we’re kind of at the mercy of the weather patterns.”
Fire officials in Plumas County were hopeful that those patterns would continue to work in their favor at least through this morning.
The fire, which broke out Sept. 3, was 28 percent contained Monday night, and more than 3,400 personnel were on the scene, DeHart said. “The fire did very little moving (Monday). Mother Nature was smiling down on us.”
DeHart said winds are forecast to shift again later today and start blowing out of the southeast. If that happens, the smoke from the massive blaze may again blow away from Sacramento and over the Susanville area.
A DC-10 equipped as an air tanker dropped three loads of fire retardant on the northern edge of the fire, and firefighters are confident they have made enough progress along that section of the blaze to keep it from spreading.
“Things are looking better,” DeHart said.
More than 100 homes on the southern side of the blaze, as well as a campground at Antelope Lake, remain evacuated. The fire has destroyed three structures, including one home and a historic cabin.
After several days in which the flames spread by massive amounts, the blaze grew by just 1,000 acres Monday.
Fire officials do not have an estimated containment date, however, and expect to be battling the blaze for at least another week.
The fire was human-caused and started on private property, fire officials said. It quickly spread through the rugged and steep terrain of Plumas National Forest, threatening homes in the communities of Greenville and Taylorsville.
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