By Thomas Himes
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
LOS ANGELES — The Station Fire continued to burn east into the San Gabriel wilderness on Tuesday as firefighters braved treacherous terrain while hoping to forge containment lines.
Firefighters have burned, cut and bulldozed more than 65 miles of boundaries around the Station Fire to reach a tenuous 56 percent containment. But the effort to construct those lines has been hampered by steep terrain and gusting winds.
The blaze has consumed more than 160,000 acres.
“There was areas in the higher elevations where we had 15-20 mph wind,” Glendale Fire Department spokesman Carlos Guerrero said. The weather “is going to continue to dry out combustibles and it’s going to cause extreme fire behavior especially in areas to the east.”
A 2,000-acre spot fire jumped a containment boundary two miles northeast of Chilao Flats over the weekend, forcing firefighters to postpone containment line construction and redeploy personnel and aircraft to extinguish the blaze.
“We reassigned air resources from Mount Wilson and sent them to Chilao Flats,” Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Kurt Schaefer said.
Firefighters still must construct more than 45 miles of line if they hope to realize their estimated containment date of Sept. 15, according to Guerrero.
“It’s very steep and rugged terrain,” U.S. Forest Service spokesman Nathan Judy said. “We helicoptered crews into spike camps, in the blackened areas near Chilao Flats.”
Once spot fires subsided, firefighters planned to ignite back burns and have aircraft drop flame retardant across areas near the foothill communities and along the fire’s southeastern boundary.
“We want to thicken containment lines to make sure they support any Santa Ana winds that may come later,” Schaefer said.
Firefighters plan to extend containment lines along Winston Ridge and Rincon Motorway, however the steep and inaccessible terrain has made line construction slow going on the fire’s eastern boundary.
In the event those lines are incomplete when the fire arrives, or the boundaries fail, Highway 39 is the contingency line. That line is located more than eight miles east of the fire’s eastern-most edge.
“The fire is still actively burning in the east,” Guerrero said.
Firefighters also have been trucked and flown into areas to fight the fire from its interior outward, according to Schaefer.
“We sent hot shot crews into areas that haven’t burned,” Schaefer said.
More than 20 aircraft have dropped 1.5 million gallons of fire retardant and 2.5 million gallons of water on the Station Fire, and some 4,687 personnel remain assigned to the blaze. It has cost more than $57 million to fight so far.
Two firefighters have died and 75 homes have been lost in the Station Fire to date.
The fire is believed to have been the result of arson.
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