Monument Fire Swells Another 4000 Acres; Containment Remains at 5%
![Sign posted at the Strawhouse in Big Flat. Multiple structures were lost in the town area as fire swept through earlier this month. [Photo posted on Shasta-Trinity National Forest's Facebook page]](https://kymkemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/238313802_3050178655214173_4331216963773381654_n.jpg)
Sign posted at the Strawhouse in Big Flat. Multiple structures were lost in the town area as fire swept through earlier this month. [Photo posted on Shasta-Trinity National Forest’s Facebook page]
According to the Shasta-Trinity National Forest Public Affairs Office,
Last night, firefighters experienced active fire throughout the fire area. Crews worked to hold the fire at respective containment lines. The fire has increased to 79,073 acres and remains 5% contained.
Wind gusts from the north proved unfavorable conditions overnight. Crews were unable to safely perform firing operations along the fire’s perimeter, alternately they spent the night holding the primary perimeter and containing any fire growth outside the Burnt Ranch community. The Fire made upslope runs around Ironside mountain and continues to grow in that area. Firefighters continued to patrol and monitor along the SR-299 corridor, identifying any hot spots and concentrating their efforts on mop-up, eliminating any heat sources that could potentially cause a flare-up. Crews have successfully kept the fire on the western edge of the North Fork of the Trinity River as it continues moving to the north. Overnight, the firefighters were able to hold the contingency lines around Red Hill and Hocker Meadow. State resources continue to establish two contingency lines paralleling Maple Creek. Heavy equipment operators worked through the night extending containment lines by clearing trees and brush from ridges along the Hayfork Divide, Knowles Gulch and Hayfork Bally.
North winds presented challenges for the firefighters as air filled the corridor providing opportunity for the fire to align with the slope, advancing a 2 mile run to the south in the old burn scar. The head of the fire slopped over into the headwaters of the creeks in Hayfork Bally west of the lookout.
Today, firefighters will build on the good work performed by night operation resources. Our top priorities are life safety and providing point protection and defense for the communities and those residences surrounding Burnt Ranch, Junction City, Canyon Creek and Helena. Crews will work throughout the day to improve contingency lines and scout for opportunities for utilizing natural features as fire breaks and constructing additional lines.
Resources will continue to patrol and mop-up west along the power lines to the road, north to Chaparral Mountain down to Burnt Ranch. Additionally, firefighters will monitor the SR-299 corridor for opportunities to extinguish any lingering, burning vegetation in and around the communities within the interior of the burn. Persistent winds and drought-starved fuels will be the driving force for late afternoon alignment for fire runs. Firefighters will remain vigilant in their tactics to hold the fire at the containment lines and aggressively extinguish any spot fires that occur.
Air support continues to be hampered by the thick, dense smoke and crews continually assess conditions for the opportunity to fly.
We’ve gathered the most important information about the Monument Fire and organized it below for our readers.
Stats:
777 Total personnel, 9 hand crews, 65 engines, 7 helicopters, 13 dozers, 5 water tenders, 5 masticator
The Weather:
According to the Shasta-Trinity National Forest Public Affairs Office,
Elevated moisture and cloud cover continued to move into the region providing better overnight humidity recoveries. Up canyon winds lasted through midnight with down-slope wins developing overnight.
Today, the southeast winds transition in the morning along the ridges, switching to northwest up-slope, up-canyon and gusting to 20-25 mph in the afternoon. Increase of north winds tomorrow and winds will stay gusty and elevated for the next few days.
The Roads:
State Highway 299 is closed from 1.7 miles east of Hawkins Bar at Ammom Road. To Sky Ranch Road in Junction City.
The Maps:
- Operations Map –to see details either zoom or click on the map and download a pdf.
- KMZ Map–Zoom for detail or for 3D imagery, click on the map and download a file that connects with your Google Earth program.
Evacuation and Help Information Including Community Meetings:
- Evacuation Centers are at
- The American Red Cross is opening a shelter for #DixieFire and #MonumentFire evacuees at Shasta College, 1155 Old Oregon Trail, Building 1900, #Redding, CA.
- Evacuation Center on western side of the fire:
Trinity Velley Elementary School, 730 California 96, Willow Creek, CA 95573
- Areas under Evacuation Order are:
- Big Bar
- Big Flat
- Burnt Ranch
- Canyon Creek
- Cedar Flat
- Coopers Bar
- Del Loma
- Helena
- Junction City
- Red Hill
- Anyone impacted by Wildfires in Trinity County can receive free referral support, group support, and one-on-one crisis intervention by reaching out to (530) 461-0257 and [email protected].
- According to the Trinity County Animal Shelter, “If you are being evacuated and need help moving or a place to take large animals please call either the sheriffs office at 530.623.2611 or us here at the shelter at 530.623.1370.” More information here: Animal Shelter Evacuation Information From the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department
- Mandatory evacuations caused by fast moving wildfires in the local area have resulted in the temporary closures of several Trinity County Post Offices.
Customers impacted by these closures may pick-up mail at alternative locations.See details below:
Earlier Chapters:
- Evacuation Warnings Issued for Del Loma Area Along Hwy 299; 1000 Acres and 0% Contained
- Hwy 299 Closed at Big Bar Due to the Monument Fire
- Hwy 299 Reopens, But ‘Subject to Closure at Any Time’
- Trinity County Sheriff Issues Evacuation Orders Tonight in Big Bar Area as Monument Fire Grows; Hwy 299 Closed!
- Breakout Spots From the Monument Fire Crossed 299 and Trinity River, Threaten Structures
- [UPDATE 6:52 p.m.: Monument Fire Now 9000 Acres, 0% Contained] Evacuation Order for Cedar Flat and Evacuation Warning for Burnt Ranch Areas Along Hwy 299
- Monument Fire’s Behavior Causes Sheriff to Issue Evacuation Warning for Big Flat
- Monument Fire Grows Another 6000 Acres, Now at 15,000 and 0% Contained
- Monument Fire Grows Over 2500 Acres Today
- About 240 Customers Without Power as the Monument Fire Continues to Disrupt the Lives of the Small Communities Along Hwy 299
- Monument Grew Another 7000 Acres to Almost 25,000 and Remains Uncontained
- Evacuation Warning For Helena, Junction City, Coopers Bar, Red Hill, and Canyon Creek
- Trinity County Sheriff Issued an Evacuation Order for Big Flat
- Monument Fire: New Evacuation Orders and Warnings as Fire Ramped Up Activity Today
- Structures in the Tiny Tourist Town of Big Flat Burned as Monument Fire Swallows Another 10,000 Acres, Still 0% Contained
- Trinity County Sheriff’s Office Issues Evacuation Order for Helena
- Monument Fire Grows to 42,567 Acres, Still 0% Containment
- Spot Fire Northwest of Junction City
- Monument Fire Just Under 50,000 Acres and 0% Contained as It Spread Quickly Overnight
- Monument Fire Surpasses 50,000 Acres
- Evacuation Order Issued for Burnt Ranch Area
- Temporary Evacuation Point Set Up for Evacuees From the Monument Fire
- Monument Fire Captures Just Under 58,000 Acres, Firefighters Hold at 3% Containment
- Thirty-One Structures Destroyed so Far as the Monument Fire Takes 62,490 Acres
- After a Night Where the Fire Grew a Mile to the East in One Area, Red Flag Warning Will Challenge Crews Battling the Monument Fire Today
- Red Flag Conditions Again Today as Monument Fire Closes in on 75,000 Acres With Only 5% Containment
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4 wide fire lines built by dozers that don’t work. How about this idea start logging clearcuts are great fire breaks how about several 20 to 30 acre clearcuts surrounding burnt ranch weaverville to protect homes.
Leaving the trees would be better and doing prescribed burns around the community every year. Logging is a dying business.
And having homes for the homeless is a dying business too.
Ah the Ole homeless and homes… just build them a home and it’s solved lol.
There are currently more empty homes in Humboldt and there are homeless. Your argument stems from your war on nature, rather than any sense of compassion.
Charlie c’mon. Salvage logging reduces the fuel. Pre burn, standing dead, diseased. Reduce the fuel.
Salvaging diseased trees spreads disease more, standing dead is habitat. Need to burn in winter. There is a lot of native plants that rely on fire. The burned floor helps give nutrients to the trees. The earth has been around a lot longer than logging.
Logging is a dieing business? When was the last time you tried to buy wood and didn’t need to take out a loan?! Logging will die when trees aren’t worh anything.
Try building simpler so it won’t Cost you so much. But I forgot it’s America, everyone needs to build bigger better than the people who see them so they can feel better about themselfs lol. Logging is thriving? Just like the fishing industry and cannabis.
Wind borne embers, which are far and away the biggest cause of building ignitions during wildfires, can travel two miles in extreme conditions and still retain their competence to ignite combustibles. Clearcuts will not protect against that, will be expensive to maintain, will open up the remaining stand to the threat of windthrow, and contribute to further degradation of the already hurting fisheries.
As long as surface and ladder fuels are treated thoroughly, along with slash disposal, leaving a closed upper canopy will both protect against crown fires (the name of the game) and require much less maintenance, as well as mitigating potential windthrow. In addition, they provide ready made anchor points from which to conduct burnout operations to starve an advancing fire of even more fuels in the immediate environs of the community.
CAL FIRE, the Humboldt County Resource Conservation District, and the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council have collaborated to construct a SHADED fuel break around Garberville. This needs to be replicated throughout the West. Of course, this will take much time and $. At least at this time, we’ve got the attention of the politicos, so decent prospects for the $. In the meantime, in my opinion (admittedly biased, but informed by experience) each resident and/or landowner in what’s known as the wildland-urban interface has a responsibility to set themselves up for survival. That means achieving adequate defensible space to preclude a wall of flame from arriving at the front door (https://www.firesafesonoma.org/wp-content/uploads/living_with_fire.pdf), and hardening the home to resist ignition from wind borne embers (https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/Prepare/Building/ and https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8393.pdf). Done properly, these will set folks up for their homes to survive, in various situations and levels of threat. Likewise, hardening the whole community against ignition from embers, and putting a buffer around the community to slow down and reduce the radiant heat from an approaching fire, will allow the fire to do what it does around the community and the community still survive. Of course, we should apply more progressive landscape level fuel (and forest health, the over-arching goal) treatments, but that will take time and much $. Just as with defensible space, the strategy is to start at the home and work outwards, we should do the same with community protection.
Not only does pairing adequate defensible space with home hardening make it easier and more likely that your home will survive, but it has the added benefit of allowing the suppression personnel to focus their efforts on stopping the fire rather than being preoccupied with evacuation and structure protection, the reverse situation of what was described in yesterday’s post.
The US Forest Service has had its other-than-suppression budget cut over and over for the past few decades. This severely limits their ability to conduct protective treatments ahead of the actual fires. Lobbying our congresspeople is probably the only way to fix that. Cost share subsidies are available to private landowners to treat their own properties. I have a small crew that does this sort of work in Southern Humboldt. More crews are needed. I am available to assess and consult on wildfire safety projects throughout the region, including managing projects: [email protected]
ps – much of this comment is repeated from yesterday’s post, but Chuck U asked for me to re-post it today, and this seemed the most likely place. Stay safe, everyone!
Thank you for this post! And the links!! We all need more info to do what we can for our own situations. And protecting our own homes and cabins relieves the stress on the firefighters’ limited resources. I learned a lot- unfortunately after the fire arrived! Creepers are the most common way your cabin burns- metal sheets prevent embers from getting into that crawl space. Roofing is another vulnerability- I only do metal roofing now…We build wooden structures in forests with extensive fire history. Lightening will strike. Fire will come. Prepare. And when preparation isn’t enough remember- people and animals first! Things are just things. Expect fire…every year
Covid sneaks into that rich person’s protected house and it will burn from the inside out
The problem is the fine fuels. The good timber isn’t so much the problem. There’s no money in treating all the slash. Clear-cutting and burning everything carefully might work for the first year, but you’d have to keep up on thinning every few years to get your timber to grow, and to keep it from being a dog hair tight fuel bomb in 8-10 years. All the thinning that has to happen just costs money. It would be good for loggers, and everybody else. Figure out a market for all the brush, and an economic way to get it from the forest, and we’d be gettn somewhere.
cut wide line and till it so nothing grows… and then farm that area…. with a bunch of line around known areas of fire danger, there is less risk.
To me “the embers” aren’t a reason to prevent devastating fires with good forest farming and clear cuts where a strategic thick line can divide up areas at risk.
I know the various stakeholders and some of the tree police want it all to burn, but that’s odd to me… Parks around the edges of the forest… could be nice.
Otherwise a black charcoal future is at hand, no?
Thank you to the firefighters, especially the volunteers.
Clear cutting is the exact opposite of what needs to be done, what a silly comment.
Agree 100% with Logger.
Kym, I recently realized you are not a Russian Bot, and are another human making another positive mark on the world via your hard work.
I recently was listening to Canam missing 411 Dave P anyway his page. A viewer/researcher stated and I say with a bias. Is that people are pre- programmed. Then commenter said even to their political/world view.
Point being, if I a wanna be Catholic. Am called to love and scold with a parents heart, then doesn’t it make it all the world harder, when I’m an arm chair conductor, and you’s people aren’t dancing to my sound of screeching. Like can’t we all get along in my oyster.
Any way, welcome to the human race. Although I hated you because you essentially our Alpha , and im just a yelping omega that …
Actually. Please start a crazy person dating service.
You , ouch, research, us heathens, then after scolding, you give us a shot at meeting like minded nut bags.
Then you can start day care, yes..with like minded baby ,
Hope people listen , and get out. I had a friend try to save a car, and he almost got killed, and actually had to jump into a Fite truck, and he said if thier door his iPhone screen was about to pop.
Huh?
Put the meth pipe down.
I agree with logger, the feds should cut line along new river and denny road. Dying or not, fires are ravaging people’s homes and lives. God Bless the firefighters!
So after the fire burns through and is gone. Dose some guy go stand in the ashes and make a Proclamation this is now Contained ?
Has more to do with getting a solid line around it, and mopping up 100 ft in, at least. People might look at the fire. When it is contained someone says ” the fire is contained”
Dam near every time. It’s a 50/50 chance. God you should see me go without spell check
You’re out of your jurisdiction Grammar Cop.
Bottom line, fire fighters don’t get paid to put out fires, they get paid to fight them. Do the math! Fix the forest, and put the fucking fires out!
How do we fix the forest? Pretty sure it did just fine before we came here and messed it up. Old growth trees create microclimates and are fire resistant…
this forest is best left fixed by the people that own it, and the feds but maybe cal fire should be regulating them instead of the private timber folks.
The land has been logged over for centuries. The “go back to old growth” by kicking out the landowner idea is risky and nuts in practice.
Just my 2 cents.
Trump told ya’all how to do it after the Paradise fire. Rake your damn forests! Clean your floors!
Nah nobody want to be out weeks on end, eating grit. Firefighters get paid to putt around the station and clean up, and make sandwiches too. Initial Attack is fun for about 1 hour.
They only get paid “base pay” at the station. While on a fire you get a quarter more for Hazzard pay. Plus 16 hours a day for two weeks so you add up the overtime. They would rather be on fires.
Nice article and information blast, Kym. I was watching the northwest perimeter of the Monument Fire last night from Denny Rd. and saw it more than double coming over the northridge of Ironside.
That must have been nerve wracking.
they dont care about us west of ironside. No contingency lines. Just the New River… pray on it Holmes
Google is saying Route 16 from Big Bar to Hayfork is open, but looking at the map that seems unlikely. Can someone clear this up for me?
Here’s a listing of the road closures per forest order no. 14-21-24:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd938377.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi5gve5jrDyAhWxAZ0JHTuJDeUQFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1FfBkAqchnnVhDVL8nZ3WZ