Last week, gusty red flag conditions sent embers from the Dixie fire flying into tinder-dry terrain, causing the blaze to explode by nearly 150,000 acres in less than two days. “It’s all based on fire-weather conditions,” Cal Fire incident spokesman Edwin Zuniga said, noting that the heat, dryness and gusty winds that have stoked the fire’s growth show little signs of improvement in coming days.Īfter more favorable conditions over the weekend, temperatures in Northern California near the fire are expected to climb back into the high 90s by Wednesday and could reach triple digits, the National Weather Service said. The estimated date for containment of the massive fire is Aug. The fire grew to 489,287 acres Monday and was only 21% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said. It has destroyed more than 400 structures and sent tens of thousands of residents fleeing for safety.Īnd officials are warning that it could take several more weeks to contain the monstrous blaze, which is the second-largest wildfire in California’s recorded history. It has been 26 days since the Dixie fire ignited in the dense forest of Northern California's Plumas County. It typically takes at least 24 hours from the time a high-wind event is declared over for the utility to inspect its lines, make any necessary repairs and restore all service.By By Hayley Smith / Los Angeles Times (TNS)
If PG&E goes ahead with the shutoff, it would be the first imposed due to high winds since January, when 5,100 customers lost power, a company spokeswoman said. The latest public safety power shutdown by PG&E, the state's largest investor-owned utility, could disrupt electric service to some 39,000 customers scattered across 16 northern California counties, the company said. But PG&E has said the blaze may have started when a tree fell onto one of the utility's power cables.
The cause of the Dixie fire remains under investigation. The forecast also prompted Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) (PCG.N) to issue a public notice warning it was likely to cut power to thousands of homes and businesses beginning on Tuesday evening to reduce the wildfire risks posed by possible wind damage to its transmission lines. "These winds are really going to test those lines tonight." "It's going to challenge a lot of our lines that we've constructed throughout the fire," he said. (Open in an external browser to see an interactive graphic on wildfires.)Īs of Monday, an army of more than 6,500 firefighting personnel had managed to carve containment lines - clearing away unburned vegetation - around 31% of the Dixie fire's perimeter to curtail the flames' spread.īut their progress would likely be tested as fire crews faced a new bout of dry, heavy winds forecast to sweep the region starting late Monday afternoon and persisting through Wednesday afternoon, Cal Fire spokesman David Janssen told Reuters by telephone. It is also the biggest by far among scores of conflagrations raging across the Western United States in a highly incendiary summer wildfire season experts say is symptomatic of climate change. The Dixie ranks as the second-largest California wildfire on record - surpassed only by the million-acre-plus August Complex Fire of 2020. Roughly 15,000 additional structures were listed as threatened on Monday, and nearly 28,700 people were estimated to be under evacuation orders, said Jim Evans, a spokesman for the Dixie fire incident command. All but one of several people listed as missing after Greenville was largely destroyed have since turned up safe, though one man still unaccounted for may have moved from the area prior to the fire, according to the Plumas County Sheriff's Office.
Some 1,200 homes and other structures have gone up in flames, including most of the historic downtown area of Greenville, a gold rush mining hamlet engulfed by the blaze more than a week ago. The so-called Dixie fire has blackened nearly 570,000 acres (230,670 hectares) of drought-parched timber and brush in the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of San Francisco since erupting on July 14, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
Aug 16 (Reuters) - Strike teams battling a mammoth wildfire displacing thousands of northern California residents braced for a resurgence of high winds on Monday, as the state's largest utility warned widespread precautionary power shutoffs were likely this week.
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