Experts Predict Four More Months Of Fires

The Wildfire Season In California Could Be Especially Long This Year Due To Dry Conditions

(CBS/AP)  Hundreds of wildfires burned across central and northern California for a second week Monday, an explosive start to a fire season likely to last well into October as dry, hot weather, rough terrain and lightning storms complicate efforts to bring blazes under control.

The number of fires forced firefighting officials to strategically choose which blazes to fight, while leaving some others to burn for weeks or months.

"It's like eating an elephant - you've got to eat it one bite at a time," said Jason Kirchner, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

In some rugged, remote areas, it will not be possible to attack all of the blazes, because the risk to firefighters is too great, he said.

"We have to take a step back, figure out where the best place is to make a stand and sometimes wait for the fire to come to us in those situations," he said.

In difficult to reach, hilly terrain on California's Central Coast one of the largest fires remains stubbornly out of control, reports CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone. Nearly 40,000 acres have been consumed and this fire is only three percent contained. It burned to the very edges of Big Sur's tourist attractions.

"Right behind me just at the top of this knoll about 300 or 400 feet above the highway we had 30-foot high flames," said Kirk Gafill.

At Gafill's restaurant, business has fallen by 80 percent at the start of the busy summer season.

"The timing you know could never be good for something like this, but this is about the worst possible timing," he said.

Long-running wildfires are not unusual in California. It was four months before firefighters controlled a blaze that blackened more than 240,000 acres of Santa Barbara County backcountry last year.

What is extraordinary this year is the number of fires burning at the same time, Kirchner said. The weekend of June 21, some 1,200 fires were burning - a figure Forest Service officials said appeared to be an all-time record in California.

The Forest Service put the figure at about 600 on Monday. It attributed the gains to its tactic of attacking small fires first, and to significant assistance from other states and from Canada.

State officials, however, counted more than 1,000 ongoing blazes. The source of the discrepancy was apparently a different counting method.

Also unusual, Kirchner said, was that there have been no significant injuries to civilians or firefighters even though some 570 square miles have burned in California this season, though there were a few minor injuries as harsh terrain hampered firefighters' efforts to battle a blaze in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

"It is extremely steep, very rugged territory, and there are a lot of injuries, twisting ankles, slipping on hills," Kirchner said. Burning debris is "rolling downhill right past your containment line. It's very complicated, difficult, dirty firefighting work."

Even so, firefighters managed to increase their containment of that 30,000-acre fire from 15 to 23 percent.

Over the weekend, the federal government sent eight C-130 firefighting aircraft to help douse California flames. The giant tankers can drop nearly 3,000 gallons of fire retardant, when the pilots can see. But heavy smoke across the state has left much of the job to firefighters on the ground, Blackstone reports.

Josh White, a Butte County firefighter, says lighting back fires, depriving the larger fire of material to burn, has been paying off.

"When we do that, we decide where the fire is going," White explained. "Normally it's mother nature at the controls."

But Mother Nature is responsible for the unusually dry conditions that have brought an early and dangerous start to this fire season.

Two wildfires choked parts of the Sierra Nevada foothills, sending up plumes of smoke that darkened patches of the 100-mile stretch between Sacramento and Reno.

The fires in the Tahoe National Forest blanketed portions of the Interstate 80 corridor linking the two cities and the foothill communities in between where tens of thousands of people live.

Along the Pacific, fire officials said fog and humidity helped them gain ground against a blaze that was just 3 percent contained in the storied town of Big Sur. John Heil, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said it had blackened about 39,600 acres.

Firefighters poured personnel and equipment into the area to ensure the fire did not reach the town, said John Ahlman, a spokesman for the Los Padres National Forest.

Heil said there was a possibility of rain in the far northern part of the state this week. But the changing weather pattern could also bring new lightning and high winds, which could touch off new blazes and fan the current ones, he said.

Even a modest rain storm - highly unusual in July - would do little to diminish the likelihood of a long, tough fire season, Heil said.

"Unless it rains, and we get some really good rainfall, you can pretty much expect it to be here right through October," he said.

[edgardebbins]

I''m not sure there will enough fuel for these fires to burn for another 4 months. Once a fire rages through an area, its quite a while before it can happen again.

[lloydbest1]

Only four months?

Hate to be the bearer of worse news but the reason we are having the rainfall deficits - and consequent fires - we are in California involve long term climate shifts due to global warming (or global cooling, global whining or whatever chimate change scenario you favor). The rainy season is ending sooner in the spring, starting later in the fall and what rain that does fall during California''s annual summer drought will be less.
The major take away, though, is these changes are PERMANENT - at least over the period of decades, if not human lifetimes. We will not likely see the rainfall patterns and amounts (as meager as they were) we were accustomed to during the last century reassert themselves. At least not on any regular basis.
Think I''m making this up? Google "Western Regional Climate Center" and choose just about any location in northern California. Check out the rainfall totals for the period of record and in almost every instance you will see a reecent drop in average rainfall, most notably during early spring and early fall. 2005 was the odd exception but that was definitely a one-off.
The NWS Climate prediction Center as well as my own crystal ball, as cloudy as it sometimes is, tells me we won''t be seeing the hoped for rains in October this year; maybe not in November, either. There is an excellent chance many of the fires now raging out of control will still be doing so come Halloween.

[jeffstersf]

faith_in_w: Yeah right. So why did your angry, vindictive god flood the mid-West last week? Jees, you flyover state nutjobs and your cosmic connect-the-dots. The fires are due to poor forest management and global warming. Also, fires are CRUCIAL for redwood reproduction. Sorry, but you''re just plain lunatic if you thing some deity punishes when he/she is upset.

[faith_in_w]

It could stop today if they made gay marriage illegal again. God is angry.

[observer2020]

Leotheliones: I said that yesterday. Use aircraft also, that way water can be airdropped in the really bad areas to let the guys on the ground try to get an upper hand. California needs to start ''burning off'' underbrush on a regular basis to try to keep things like this to a minimum. Also, there are certain trees that can reproduce only after a fire...nature watching out for herself.

[leotheliones]

If the forest fires are going to last for 4 more months, we should use liquid tankers such as milk,water, and other liq., vehicles to remove the water from the flooded areas, have it filtered by the states that need it. Satuate areas that are in peril. Have FEMA pay the biggest portion, and save lives, homes livestock and land