Fire crews slow blaze near Yosemite

Smoke is drifting more than 200 miles away, air quality is poor, authorities say

Firefighters mop up hot spots while battling the Oak Fire in the Jerseydale community of Mariposa County, Calif., on Monday, July 25, 2022. They are part of Task Force Rattlesnake, a program comprised of Cal Fire and California National Guard firefighters. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Firefighters mop up hot spots while battling the Oak Fire in the Jerseydale community of Mariposa County, Calif., on Monday, July 25, 2022. They are part of Task Force Rattlesnake, a program comprised of Cal Fire and California National Guard firefighters. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

JERSEYDALE, Calif. -- Firefighters have significantly slowed the spread of a huge wildfire burning in a forest near Yosemite National Park, where thousands of residents from mountain communities were still under evacuation orders Monday and smoke was spreading for hundreds of miles around.

Crews "made good headway" against the Oak Fire, according to a Sunday night incident report by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. "Fire activity was not as extreme as it has been in previous days."

But smoke from the fire drifted more than 200 miles, reaching Lake Tahoe, parts of Nevada and the San Francisco Bay Area, officials said.

"It's been just horrendous with the air quality," said Kim Zagaris, an adviser with the Western Fire Chiefs Association, which maps wildfires across the country.

More than 2,500 firefighters with aircraft support were battling the blaze that erupted last Friday southwest of the park, near the town of Midpines in Mariposa County. Officials described "explosive fire behavior" on Saturday as flames made runs through bone-dry vegetation caused by the worst drought in decades.

By Monday morning, the blaze had consumed more than 26 square miles of forest land, with 10% containment, Cal Fire said. The cause was under investigation.

Firefighters working in steep terrain on the ground protected homes Sunday as air tankers dropped fire retardant on 50-foot flames racing along ridgetops east of the tiny community of Jerseydale. Personnel face tough conditions that include steep terrain, sweltering temperatures and low humidity, Cal Fire said.

There are two major blazes burning in California, which is experiencing a fairly typical ramp-up to what is sure to be an active fire year once its infamous Santa Ana and Diablo wind events begin in September, Zagaris said.

"We've been fortunate. We're not quite as far along as we were at this time last year," he said. "But the fuels, the vegetation, are much dryer than they were last year. It's so dry out there."

Evacuations were in place Monday for more than 6,000 people living across a several-mile span of the sparsely populated fire zone in the Sierra Nevada foothills, though a handful of residents defied the orders and stayed behind, said Adrienne Freeman, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson.

"We urge people to evacuate when told," she said.

The Oak Fire was sparked as firefighters made progress against an earlier blaze, the Washburn Fire, that burned to the edge of a grove of giant sequoias in the southernmost part of Yosemite National Park.

The latter fire, spanning a 7.5-square-mile area, was 87% contained Monday after burning for two weeks and moving into the Sierra National Forest.


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