Deputies begin escorts into North Complex evacuation zones. Fire now at 300,000 acres
Fire crews continue to make progress containing the North Complex burning in Northern California, and a mandatory evacuation order has been reduced to a warning for one Butte County community heavily impacted by the wildfire earlier this month.
The complex is mapped at 299,723 acres (468 square miles) and reported at 74% containment, the U.S. Forest Service said in a Tuesday morning incident update.
At least 15 people have died in the blaze, all of them in the 81,500-acre West Zone of the complex, which is 60% contained, Cal Fire reported Tuesday morning.
At that reported size and with 15 confirmed fatalities, the North Complex is the fifth-largest and fifth-deadliest wildfire in recorded California history.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office on Monday evening downgraded the evacuation status for the community of Feather Falls and its immediate surrounding area. That includes Lumpkin Road, which runs from the southeast corner of Lake Oroville up northeast to the Butte-Plumas county line.
The area hit hardest by the fire’s furious sprint earlier in September, including the communities of Berry Creek and Brush Creek several miles northwest of Feather Falls, remains under mandatory evacuation orders. Communities south of Feather Falls that straddle the Butte and Yuba counties, including Forbestown, Clipper Mills and Strawberry Valley, are also under mandatory orders, according to those counties’ sheriff’s offices.
The Forest Service said Tuesday morning more than 2,000 structures have been destroyed by the North Complex, with Cal Fire’s latest situation report saying nearly about 1,950 of those structures were razed by the West Zone. Cal Fire’s incident report says another 10,000 structures in parts of Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties are still considered threatened.
The Sheriff’s Office also said this week that it is beginning to accept resident requests for law enforcement escorts into mandatory evacuation zones, but asks that these requests be limited to “urgent needs.” Those doing so must provide proof of residency and will have just 15 minutes to visit their property, sheriff’s officials said in a news release.
Residents of the evacuation zones seeking an escort can fill out a request form online at www.buttecounty.net/sheriffcoroner, or can contact the fire information call center, which is now taking those requests from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week. That number is 530-552-3010.
Cal Fire has created an online damage assessment map for the West Zone, showing preliminary information about where the destruction of homes and other buildings has been most severe.
By far the most destruction came in the Berry Creek area. But the map also shows that along the stretch of Lumpkin Road southwest of Feather Falls, dozens upon dozens of structures were either destroyed or badly damaged, many of them identified as houses and mobile homes.
Sheriff’s and coroner’s officials in Butte County have identified 14 of the 15 victims killed in the West Zone. Twelve were residents of Berry Creek, and the remaining two lived in Feather Falls.
On Sunday, nearly 140 soldiers with the California National Guard joined fire personnel to assist in mop up efforts near contained portions of the fire, Cal Fire said. More than 3,100 personnel remain assigned to the complex, with close to 2,000 of them fighting the West Zone.
Smoke — not just from the North Complex but from other major blazes burning statewide amid a record-setting fire season — limited visibility, meaning aircraft could only assist for “a few hours of air operations” Monday, according to Cal Fire’s incident report.
Cal Fire warned Monday evening of potential “erratic fire behavior” early this week near the South Fork of the Feather River Drainage, where vegetation is “critically dry.” The limited air support on Monday focused on dropping retardant on the fire line in this area.
The North Complex sparked at Plumas National Forest on Aug. 17, one of numerous major wildfire incidents that ignited across Northern California and the Bay Area in mid-August from thousands of lightning strikes in an intensely powerful thunderstorm.
The southwest corner of that fire complex, then known as the Bear Fire, remained relatively contained for two-plus weeks as the U.S. Forest Service focused efforts on larger fires in the North Complex.
Then, on Sept. 8, fueled by gusty winds that reached approximately 50 mph, the Bear Fire swept at unprecedented speeds southwest toward Lake Oroville, jumping the Middle Fork of the Feather River that morning and prompting urgent evacuations Sept. 8 and Sept. 9 for Butte County communities north of the lake.
The Bear Fire, since renamed the West Zone of the North Complex, killed at least 15 people and ravaged the town of Berry Creek, where 1,200 lived.
Climate change and California wildfires
Wildfires have always been part of life in California. The past four years have brought some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state’s modern history.
Nearly 180 people have lost their lives since 2017. More than 41,000 structures have been destroyed and nearly 7 million acres have burned – that’s roughly the size of Massachusetts.
So far this year, a record 3.4 million acres have burned and 26 people have died, according to Cal Fire.
Meanwhile, this year’s August was the hottest on record in California. A rare series of lightning storms sparked a series of fires, including the August Complex that has burned roughly 840,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history.
Our climate is becoming more severe.
The 2017 wildfire season occurred during the second hottest year on record in California and included a devastating string of fires in October that killed 44 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 buildings in Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties.
The following year was the most destructive and deadliest for wildfires in the state’s history. It included the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people and the enormous Mendocino Complex, which at 459,123 acres was the largest wildfire in the state’s history at the time.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 8:32 AM with the headline "Deputies begin escorts into North Complex evacuation zones. Fire now at 300,000 acres."
