“While good progress is being made on fire, there is still a lot of work to be done,” the update said. Officials said several evacuation orders had been turned into fire advisories.
Some areas are off-limits to bulldozers, so crews on foot cut into a line of fire and smoke from the fire hampered the response of the 24 helicopter units involved.
Since the fire broke out, no injuries have been reported by the fire service, the cause of which is being investigated.
More than 1,100 structures remain under threat.
On Tuesday morning, Cal Fire officials said in the overnight incident report, “Firefighters continue to provide structure defense, extinguish hot spots and build and improve direct lines. Ongoing drought, critically dry fuels and tree deaths continue to contribute to the spread of the fire.” firework .”
According to Cal Fire, more than 3,000 employees are fighting the fire and deploying air and land efforts, including two dozen helicopters, 286 fire trucks, 68 water tenders and 94 bulldozers.
The challenging terrain and abundant dry vegetation that fueled the fire have hampered efforts to stop its growth, says Cal Fire spokesman Cpt. Keith Wade told DailyExpertNews Monday.
“The footprint here, the acreage of fuels available to burn when the fire flares up, along with the topography available — the canyons, the drainages — the wind flowing through these areas can make the fire behavior erratic and it can explode… the ferocity of that fire can be intense at times,” Wade said.
According to Cal Fire, there have been 23 wildfires in California so far this month, but only three have exceeded 500 acres. No one has come close to the mass destruction of the Oak Fire, due in part to the area’s extremely arid conditions, Wade said.
“I think the real difference that firefighters experience here is how dry everything is. It’s definitely been (dryer) over the years,” he said. “We’ve noticed that there seems to be less precipitation, less moisture, and the available fuel payload is definitely there.”
The rapid growth of the fire has also hampered evacuation efforts, Jon Heggie, chief of Cal’s firefighting battalion, told DailyExpertNews on Monday.
“The reality is it’s going so fast, it doesn’t give people a lot of time and sometimes they’ll just have to evacuate with the shirts on their backs,” Heggie said.
The increasing progress made by firefighters has allowed officials to reduce evacuation orders in some areas to fire advisories, Cal Fire said.
An evacuation shelter has been set up for displaced residents at Mariposa Elementary School.
Heggie attributed the “speed and intensity” of Oak Fire to the prolonged drought and man-made climate change.
“What I can tell you is that this is a direct result of what climate change is,” he said. “You can’t have a 10-year drought in California and expect everything to stay the same. And we’re now paying the price for that 10-year drought and that climate change.”
“That dead fuel that’s the result of that climate change and that drought is what’s causing these, what we now call ‘mega fires,'” Heggie said.
The report suggested it is time we “learn to live with fire”, and calls on authorities and policymakers to work with local communities to use indigenous knowledge and invest in planning and prevention.
Poppy Harlow, Taylor Romine, Stella Chan, Sara Smart and Rachel Ramirez of DailyExpertNews contributed to this report.