Creek Fire Oct. 31 update: Alaska team on scene; air worsens; Sierra National Forest still closed

Suppression repair continues through large areas of the Creek Fire, especially on the western edge, where crews will be working for the next several days to prep the area for the coming winter.

The overall footprint of the fire remains mostly unchanged, even as it continues to burn in the northeast, where crews used handlines to hold the fire spread near Lake Edison on Thursday.

As of early Saturday night, the fire area had grown to 380,002 acres, up slightly from 379,571 acres in the morning update, with containment at 70%.

Full containment isn’t expected until Nov. 15.

The cause of the Creek Fire remains under investigation. It is the largest single-incident wildfire in California history and fourth-largest overall, the latter when including two or more separate fires that combined into one “complex” incident.

Here are California’s top five largest fires of all time, with name, month it began, counties involved, total acres, structures lost and deaths:

August Complex: August 2020; Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Tehama, Glenn, Lake, & Colusa; 1,032,648; 935; 1

Mendocino Complex: July 2018; Colusa, Lake, Mendocino & Glenn; 459,123; 280; 1

SCU Lightning Complex: August 2020; Stanislaus, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, & San Joaquin; 396,624; 222; 0

Creek Fire: September 2020; Fresno & Madera; 379,571; 856; 0

LNU Lightning Complex: August 2020; Sonoma, Lake, Napa, Yolo & Solano; 363,220; 1,491; 6

Alaska management team joins fight

Command of the Creek Fire transitioned from the Type 1 California Interagency Incident Management Team to the Type 2 Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team at 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the overview posted at inciweb.nwcg.gov.

There are 72 members of the Alaska team, according to incident commander Ed Sanford. They are part of a larger firefighting force that still numbers nearly 1,000.

“We hope to wrap this thing up,” Sanford said, “and I also understand what it’s like to have a bunch of firefighters in my backyard and back home and I’ve been in your shoes where I’ve had teams come through and we want to see closure to this.”

Closures, restrictions extended

Parts of the Sierra National Forest, including the High Sierra Ranger District, will remain closed through Nov. 30. Other closures are extended through Nov. 9. See fs.usda.gov/sierra for the full list.

Emergency fire restrictions have been extended for all National Forest System lands within the Pacific Southwest Region that includes the Creek and SQF Complex fire regions. Campfires and camp stoves are not permitted while dispersed camping.

Camp stoves are permitted in campgrounds and other developed recreation sites.

Post-fire assessment begun on SQF Complex Fire

More progress has been made on the containment of the SQF Complex Fire, which has burned 170,165 acres. Crews gained containment on Friday, advancing five percentage points to 80%.

Full containment of the fire that lightning sparked Aug. 19 is expected Nov. 20. It ranks as the 18th largest fire in the state since modern records began being kept in 1932.

A Burned Area Emergency Response (or BAER) team has begun its post-fire assessment and created a Soil Burn Severity map.

The map shows approximately 45% of the acres analyzed by the BAER team is either unburned/very low (21%) or low (24%) soil burn severity, while 49% sustained a moderate soil burn severity. Only 6% burned at high soil burn severity.

Air quality worsens in fire region

There may be some rain coming to the area, according to the National Weather Service, but it’s a week away and dependent upon which of several forecasts actually plays out. The current forecast continues to call for warmer-than-normal temperatures through Sunday and into next week.

While the air quality forecast from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District remains mostly unchanged for Saturday (with moderate air quality expected in all counties but Kings County), the Air Quality Index spiked into the unhealthy range in parts of the city of Fresno on Saturday morning. The Woodward Lake area was at 152.

Areas closer to the fire — like Three Rivers — were pushing into the hazardous range.

The PM2.5 concentration levels in Fresno hit level four overnight.

This story was originally published October 31, 2020 at 9:17 AM with the headline "Creek Fire Oct. 31 update: Alaska team on scene; air worsens; Sierra National Forest still closed."