East Bay brush fire extinguished, but state’s biggest fire still rages on



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Crews fully contained a brush fire hours after it broke out in eastern Contra Costa County on Sunday morning, while a massive fire in northern California continued to grow even as the firefighters progressed by slowing it down.

The Diablo fire was reported around 9:24 a.m. Sunday near Vasco Road and Camino Diablo south of Brentwood, said George Huang, deputy head of the Santa Clara unit at Cal Fire. By early afternoon, the blaze had consumed 128 acres of grassland, prompting a response that included planes, bulldozers and more than 300 firefighters from Cal Fire as well as Contra Costa and Alameda counties. .

The blaze was completely under control around 4:15 p.m., Huang said, although around 150 firefighters remained at the scene to clean up.

“We don’t want the embers to start something new, and we have to make sure all the hot spots are extinguished,” Huang said. “It’s a very windy area today. “

The Diablo fire was one of many fires that burned across California on Sunday.

The Beckwourth Complex, the state’s largest wildfire, expanded by about 2,000 acres on Sunday north of Lake Tahoe near Nevada. For much of the day, US Highway 395 was closed due to flames that leaped over the roadway.

But “we have made good progress” to slow the spread to the northeast, said Kimberly Kaschalk, public information officer for agencies fighting the fire. Containment more than doubled during the day, to 20%, and the Beckwourth complex burned 86,076 acres on Sunday night.

Evacuation orders were extended to Milford (Lassen County), a small town north of the blaze near Honey Lake.

The fire is a combination of the Dotta fire that started on June 30 and the Sugar fire that started on July 2. They merged on July 4 in a remote corner of the state.


John King and Jessica Flores are the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected], [email protected]. Twitter: @JohnKingSFChron, @jesssmflores



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