The San Francisco Chronicle
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INYO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — California fire crews made progress Monday in battling a 37,000-acre blaze that closed trails into a popular wilderness area north of Mount Whitney but lost ground farther south as flames moved into virgin brush in the Los Padres National Forest.
Cooler temperatures and lighter winds overnight allowed firefighters to make their first meaningful headway against the state’s largest fire, located in the Inyo National Forest. The lightning-sparked blaze, which broke out Friday and destroyed at least one home, was 55 percent contained Monday.
“Things went well yesterday and last night, and we’re just hoping to really get a handle on this today,” said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Nancy Upham.
In Southern California, however, an 8,200-acre wildfire burning in the Los Padres National Forest expanded into dry brush and steep hills of the nearby San Rafael Wilderness Area, said Santa Barbara County Fire Captain Eli Iskow.
“It’s burning in areas that haven’t even burned in recorded history,” Iskow said. “The fuels are at historic lows in moisture, and now it’s burning uphill. It’s a formula that makes it very difficult to put out.”
Efforts to extinguish the Los Padres blaze were dealt a setback Sunday when a water-dropping helicopter crashed, leaving two pilots with minor injuries and prompting authorities to temporarily suspend their use of aircraft, Iskow said. Water drops from helicopters resumed by Monday morning, when the blaze was 30 percent contained, he said. The cause of the crash remained under investigation.
Officials assessing the Inyo wildfire were considering when they would be able to reopen campgrounds and trailheads into the John Muir Wilderness, visited by tens of thousands of backpackers during the summer months. No hikers were threatened by the blaze, Upham said. An exceptionally dry winter season has left the Eastern Sierra especially vulnerable this year, officials said.
Meanwhile, nearly 300 miles north, wildfires continued to burn near Antelope Lake in the Plumas National Forest.
Nearly 1,400 firefighters battled the blaze as authorities closed a 60-square-mile area around the lake to the public. The fire was 21 percent contained and had burned about 18,000 acres Monday.
The National Weather Service also warned residents throughout Central California to be on the alert for lightning storms that could spark fires through this morning.
A red-flag warning, indicating an increased risk of wildfires due to dry brush and possible lightning, also remained in effect for the mountains and valleys of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties through this afternoon.
Elsewhere, overnight rain and cooler temperatures slowed a wildfire that had raced out of a canyon in South Dakota, destroyed at least 30 houses and killed a homeowner who went back to try to save his belongings.
The blaze was started by lightning on Saturday, and by Monday it had covered 11 square miles just southwest of Hot Springs, on the southern side of the Black Hills. It was 20 percent contained and crews expected to have it fully contained by Thursday.
Other fires blackened the landscape in Utah, Nevada, Washington, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Arizona and Oregon, many of them also started by lightning and fueled by the dry conditions, made worse by a heat wave that sizzled across the West last week.
In addition to the death in South Dakota, smoke from a major Utah fire was blamed for two deaths in a weekend motorcycle accident, and another blaze still active in Utah killed three people on June 29.
The biggest wildfire in Utah history had charged across 300,000 acres or 468 square miles of dry sagebrush, cheat grass, and pinyon pine and juniper in the central part of the state.
Weather complicated efforts to combat the blaze Monday. “It’s extremely difficult to predict what the winds are going to do,” said Susan Marzec, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
“It’s still dry, with erratic, gusty wind. We’re still looking at extreme fire danger.”