Humboldt County, Calif. (KIEM)-Due to unprecedented and historic fire conditions throughout the state, the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region has closed all 18 National Forests in California.
The Red Salmon Complex Fire, burning since July 27th has grown to more than 80,000 acres as it continues to burn across three national forests just east of the Hoopa Valley Reservation.
At last check, the complex is a combined total of 84,880 and is still at 18% containment.
Saturday, burnout operations widened and strengthened fire-lines on the western flank, adding critical protection to homes and residents of the Hoopa Valley Wildland-Urban Interface.
Overnight operations completed line construction on the west side along the 10N92 Road.
Structure assessment and protection measures were provided in Forks of Salmon and Denny to reduce potential fire impact.
Fire behavior predictions suggest once the inversion lifts Saturday, there’s the potential for fire spread in all directions, according to the Forest Service.
Evacuation orders remain in effect for communities in Trinity and Siskiyou counties.
In Hoopa there are no evacuations at this time – crews worked diligently to complete burn-out operations.
Redwood News spoke to Chief & Incident Commander Gregory Moon by phone Saturday.
“So they made significant progress last night toward Tish Tang drainage,” he said. “The plan is to continue that along those control lines and burn-out the fuel between the fire and the control line all the way toward the Tish Tang rail head.
“That would really set us up for success on the reservation as far as having fire coming at the reservation so we’re feeling pretty good about the progress in the way things are going, I imagine we’ll have it completed by tomorrow (Sunday) night.”
Moon says the fire is currently on Tribal property.
“That is purely from the burnout, and so we have control lines established on the South East side of the reservation, and we’re burning those control lines off, reducing the fuel so that the fire cannot make the run further into the reservation.”
More information related to the Hoopa Valley Reservation can be found by clicking here and for more information related to the Red Salmon Complex click here.
