Monday, July 21, 2008

update on all fires in California

The focus of my writing has been on the basin complex fire. I want to pause a moment and provide an update on the status of other fires burning in California. According to the CAL FIRE webpage, maintained by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, there are still 33 active fires burning. At the peak of wildfire activity (since 20 June), there were 2,096 wildfires reported by state, local, and federal fire fighting agencies. A total of 953,907 acres have been burned to date.

According to todays fact sheet 123 residences, 1 commercial building, and 138 out buildings have been destroyed. These are the stats for threatened structures: 4,958 residences, 139 commercial buildings, and 2,166 out buildings. There have been 15,573 personnel used to fight the fires to date. Evacuation orders are still in effect for portions of Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Lake and Mendocino counties. What CAL fire calls precautionary evacuation orders (aka voluntary evacuation orders??) are in effect for portions of Monterary (basin complex fire) and Trinity Counties.

For those so inclined, you can go here to download a map of what are known as the June Lightening fires in California. It is an adobe reader file. I spent a little time looking at the map. Fires range from counties near the Oregon border south to Santa Barbara County.

As I was watching the weather channel a little while ago, they reported on a wildfire of unknown origin burning on 100 acres outside Denver.

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