FRESNO COUNTY – Nearly 2,000 firefighters are working around-the-clock to manage the Garnet Fire burning in east Fresno County and the Sierra National Forest.
The fire that started on Aug. 24 has grown to approximately 30,000 acres, with 12% containment. During a live information update on Sept. 3, Operations Section Chief Tom Browning with the California Interagency Incident Management Team 10 said crews experienced “very interesting” weather on Sept. 2 that significantly impacted the fire.
“We started out early in the day with an inversion and very moderate fire behavior, and then we had thunderstorms come in and create some extreme weather behavior for our fire,” Browning said. “We had winds in excess of 50 miles an hour, we had fire activity increase significantly and yesterday we saw the largest growth of the fire to date.”
Browning said the fire grew by approximately 5,000 acres on Tuesday. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire), the fire is the second-largest currently burning in the state.
Crews are continuing to hold fire lines north of the Kings River and on the east side of the fire, Browning said. On the west side of the fire, crews are working to keep it from moving any farther west toward the community of Balch Creek. Browning said crews are doing structure preparation and structure defense for homes in the area, along with Pacific Gas & Electric Company facilities.
Along Patterson Bluff, Browning said crews are making use of old dozer lines, old road systems and old hand lines from previous fires to stop the progression of the Garnet Fire in that area.
Fire Behavior Analyst Brian Newman said there is a lot of varied terrain across the fire area. In lower elevation portions of the fire, temperatures have been upwards of 109 degree Fahrenheit, and the fire is burning in areas with light vegetation that burns easily.
Near Balch Creek, where the North Fork of the Kings River transitions into Dinkey Creek, Newman said there is a combination of light vegetation and steep terrain.
“So really, that allows for the fire to spread very rapidly, combined with the type of topography, or the steepness of the slopes, and this is what the firefighters are dealing with today,” Newman said.
Incident Commander Joe Sean Kennedy highlighted the operational flexibility that crews have been making use of in the last few days. Two professional meteorologists with the National Weather Service have been at the incident camp with fire crews, Kennedy said, and they predicted the thunderstorms that impacted the fire.
This helped the management team notify crews in the field of changing weather conditions, including periods in which crews had to be pulled off the line due to dangerous wind speeds. Further, they were able to inform crews when it would be safe to engage in the fire again.
“Years ago, we might have had to do that on our own feeling, disengage and not be able to go back as quickly,” Kennedy said. “But due to our forethought of having all those professionals with us, we’ve been able to be a lot more flexible and a lot quicker when conditions change.”
The most current evacuation areas and road closures can be found on the Fresno County Emergency website. Residents and visitors to Fresno County can also sign up for emergency alerts online through Everbridge. Individuals signed up who are in the vicinity of the evacuation zones will receive alerts for updates to the evacuation map.
