NEWS
‘A Long Battle’
Fire crews descend on Willow Creek from near and far to face precarious Six Rivers Lightning Complex By Thadeus Greenson thad@northcoastjournal.com
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bout 100 residents from the Willow Creek area crammed into a small church on State Route 96 on Monday, where billows of smoke could be seen from a large, pane glass window spiraling into the sky across the Trinity River from the Bremer Fire as it continued to encroach on Willow Creek’s eastern edge. They were there for their first chance to hear directly from U.S. Forest Service fire officials since a brief pre-dawn storm on Aug. 5 brought an estimated 150 lightning strikes to the region, at least 10 of them sparking blazes in Six Rivers National Forest that have become known collectively as the Six Rivers Lightning Complex. If the officials sought to drive home one point during the meeting it was that help was on the way, that the cavalry was coming. “We have resources on order and we are the No. 1 priority in the state and the nation,” said California Interagency Instant Management Team 11 Operations Section Chief Seth Mitchell, drawing a round of applause from the gathered residents, many of whom had been evacuated from their homes over the weekend, and later adding that while 600 personnel are currently on the ground, “We have a whole bunch of stuff en route.” And true to Mitchell’s word, caravans of hot shot crews from all over the state and beyond could be seen a few hours later, heading east from the coast on State Route 299 and west from Redding, ready to join the fight. The response underscores the severi-
Smoke rises from the Six Rivers Lightning Complex as it burns near the Cavaletto Vineyard Estate across the Trinity River from State Route 299, just east of Willow Creek. Photo by Mark McKenna ty of the situation, with six fires actively burning miles apart in steep, fuel-laden terrain, threatening hundreds of homes spread across multiple communities. North of Willow Creek, there are the Bremer and Cedar/Waterman fires, with the Bremer Fire burning down-slope toward Willow Creek’s eastern edge and the Bigfoot subdivision, and the Cedar/Waterman Fire potentially threatening Hoopa to the north. South of Willow Creek, there’s the Bravo-Campbell Fire, which is burning to the southeast, threatening a number of small communities along State Route 299, including Salyer and Hawkins Bar. Farther south, there are the Oak and Ammon fires, which are expected to burn together any time and threaten communities along Friday Ridge and Route 1. As of 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 9, the fires had combined to scorch nearly 9,000 acres, with zero percent containment. All are burning in dense forested areas that are not only parched with drought but also filled with downed fuels after the December snow storm that felled scores of trees across the region. While CalTrans has worked for months to clear downed trees from along State Route 299, PG&E has cleared land under its transmission lines, many of the fuels left elsewhere by the storm remained to be dried by an unusually dry and warm winter and spring. Back in May, officials with the Lower Trinity River Prescribed Burn Association, the Trinity County Resource Conservation District and the nonprofit EcoFlight took a handful of locals (including the Journal) an an aerial tour of the burn scars from last
year’s Knob and Monument Fires. During the flight, the associations Basho Parks and the district’s Heidi Carpenter-Harris pointed out that while prior conditions caused the Knob and Monument fires to burn so hot they scorched the earth below the forest in certain places, the winter snow storm had made things considerably worse heading into this year’s fire season. As the fires grew rapidly amid these conditions over the weekend, exhibiting what officials dubbed “extreme fire behavior,” the U.S. Forest Service and local departments scrambled to respond with limited resources. Fire crews were able to save a string of residences along Seeley McIntosh/Campbell Ridge Road and Salyer Heights, while others slowed the Bremer Fire’s encroachment on the Bigfoot subdivision on Willow Creek’s eastern edge. Residents, meanwhile, scrambled to heed evacuation orders and get out. The Red Cross set up an evacuation center at Trinity Valley Elementary School (730 State Route 96), the Hoopa Rodeo Grounds opened as an evacuation center for large animals and a variety of locals sprang into action with trailers and trucks to help get people, their pets and livestock out of harm’s way. Social media message boards filled with prayers for neighbors and expressions of angst as people left their homes, unsure whether they’d ever see them again. “My life will change forever,” one resident posted to Facebook with a photo of a vehicle leaving a gate under a hazy sky with an orange glow. “I don’t know if this beautiful gate still stands tomorrow.
My tears streaming down right now, my heart hurts. I’m not able to save all of my animals. Praying for my house, praying for my animals, praying for my neighbors.” On the Willow Creek Bulletin Facebook page, residents posted about finding lost dogs and, in one case, shortly after 7 a.m. Aug. 8, a long-horned goat wondering Brannan Mountain Road with a harness and leash that seemed “friendly.” (Within about 20 minutes, someone had connected the poster with the goat’s owner, who’d been worried since losing track of it the night before.) Back at the Aug. 8 community meeting, U.S. Forest Service Fuels Technician Kevin Osborne advised that relatively mild weather and morning inversion layers had helped keep a bit of a lid on the blazes over the prior couple of days. In the early afternoons, when the inversion layer lifts, temperatures rise and humidity levels fall, the fires were becoming more active, but he said the weather was fairly stable and, “luckily, there aren’t extreme weather events forecast.” He said crews were working hard to take advantage of the relatively mild morning fire activity to get ground work done and prepare defense lines, preparing for fire activity to ramp up. Six Rivers National Forest Supervisor Ted McArthur said agencies have been leaning on local fire crews, who “know this country.” A resident later questioned how out-of-town crews could be expected to navigate both the rugged terrain of the area and its idiosyncrasies. As an example, he said, the area has a Three Creeks Road, Continued on next page »
northcoastjournal.com • Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022 • NORTH COAST JOURNAL
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