Light winds help firefighters attack Northern California blazes

Mother Nature has lent a helping hand to firefighters battling blazes around the northern part of the state today, dishing up light winds that appear to be pushing a blaze threatening Big Sur back on itself for now.

But more than 1,250 structures remain threatened by the Basin Complex fire in Monterey County, one of 1,500 blazes that have blackened nearly 400,000 acres in tinderbox-dry Northern California over the last 10 days.

Near Big Sur, crews with the U.S. Forest Service have been feverishly trying to construct fire breaks to protect Palo Colorado Canyon, a scattered collection of homes hidden in the steep hills east of California 1.

“You don’t realize it driving along the highway, but there are quite a few homes tucked up in those hillsides,” said John Ahman, a Forest Service spokesman. “And those are what we’re most concerned with.”

The good news for now, Ahman said, is that winds have been light and out of the northwest, helping push the fire back onto itself since Sunday. A dose of coastal overcast also propped up humidity levels, helping further slow the fire’s advance and allowing hand crews to get closer to fight the blaze.

Though much of the terrain is steep and inaccessible to heavy equipment, Ahman said bulldozers have been able in recent days to reestablish fire breaks along old lines plowed more than 30 years ago, in 1977, when a big fire pummeled the Big Sur wilderness for weeks.

Statewide, fires started mostly by a blitzkrieg of lightning nearly two weeks ago were still burning from Monterey to Modoc County. More than 19,000 firefighters from California and 41 other states have been called into the battle, joined by 1,429 fire engines, 365 bulldozers and more than 500 water-dropping aircraft.

More than 7,500 residences are threatened along with 136 commercial buildings and nearly 3,000 other structures around the state. So far, 30 residences and 21 other structures have been destroyed in the blazes, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

 eric.bailey@latimes.com