August 31, Dixie Fire update

By Michael Condon

Former fire and aviation chief of the Plumas national forest

Special at Plumas News

No one likes a broken record. But Dixie Fire, seven weeks old, plays the same old tune today. Once again, the north end of the blaze was very active, but it was the south end of the blaze near Lake Davis that produced a column of smoke reminiscent of Armageddon.

The entire fire area remains under red flag warning until 11 p.m. this evening due to strong southwest winds with gusts exceeding 35 mph and single-digit relative humidity. Add historically dry fuels and you have everything you need for extreme fire behavior.

North of Davis Lake, on the part of the blaze that started as the Grizzly Blaze, firefighters lacked the time and ground to line up in front of the blaze and clear it north of Grizzly Ridge. And it was too late to turn the fire into a scar from Walker Fire. The fire spread beyond that point on Monday.

Fire Overhead has made plans for a three-part attack. Firefighters would turn their line of fire north and descend from Grizzly Ridge and connect their line of fire in the far northwest corner of Davis Lake. This would prevent the fire from spreading to the Highway 70 corridor and the west side of Davis Lake. The second part of the attack consisted of using an existing road, widened by bulldozers to bring a line of fire from the fire to the northeast corner of Davis Lake. This would prevent spread from the east side of the lake to Portola.

The third and most difficult part of the plan is to use Route 28N01 near Squaw Valley well before the easternmost edge of the fire and travel that line to Clover Valley using the roads existing ones, then finally to tie this into the recent fire scar of the Beckwourth complex. Bulldozers would widen the line and night shots would add depth to the line.

Work began last night on the implementation of the three phases of this plan. The Grizzly Ridge shot turned the corner northbound from Grizzly Ridge and should be successfully tied into the northwest corner of Davis Lake by morning.

The second phase of the plan was also fired. It lasted most of the day but there was a big spot this afternoon that is currently working. The shot on the third part of the shot will probably take place tonight.

Note that all shooting takes place at night. Burning conditions are very favorable at night. Adding a low intensity fire to the inner edges of the fire lines eliminates fuel and effectively builds a fire line several times larger than it would otherwise be. This increases the chances of firefighters holding the line during the day when the burning conditions are much more severe.

At the north end of the blaze near Lassen Park, there was intense fire fighting today that included a sustained air attack. Small and medium-sized tankers have been back and forth between the fire-retardant bases in Redding and Chester all day.

Operations section chief Mike Wink said the fire persists in the northwest corner where the winds are favorable, but that they continue to have problems on the northeast side where the wind direction is n is not in their favor. They prevented the blaze from crossing Highway 44, but continue to fight numerous spot fires that have crossed their branch lines east of the road.

For people following the satellite-generated fire maps available on the internet, there was another example today of how these can be misleading. A widely distributed satellite-generated map showed what looked like a large slope on the west side of Grizzly Ridge above Spring Garden. This naturally worried many local residents. Firefighters on the ground confirmed that there had been no such overflow.

Winds will continue to blow from the southwest tomorrow but should be lighter than today, bringing some relief to the firefighters. The fire will remain active but a little less extreme than it has been over the past two days.

The size of the fire is now reported to be 819,956 acres. The fire lines near Antelope Lake and along Highway 36 west of Susanville were reclassified today as “contained”, bringing the fire containment to 49%.

The number of people affected by the Dixie Fire is now 3,970. This is a drop from a high of around 6,500. The reduction is due in part to the fact that much of the area is unaffected. more actively burns. More importantly, there is competition for fire extinguishing resources from several other fires, most notably the Caldor fire near Lake Tahoe. Fire managers are constantly adjusting resource allocations between fires

to best meet priorities. Threats to life and property always take priority. For several weeks, the Dixie Fire was the top priority nationwide. It has now moved to Caldor’s fire.