200 Fires Still Out of Control : Some Evacuees Return to Homes; Outlook Improves

A few evacuees were permitted to return to their homes in this mountain community Sunday as crews battling the epidemic of fire that has blackened nearly 500,000 acres of California brush and timberland reaped the benefit of calmer, cooler skies.

But authorities still had no idea when the fires might be controlled.

And smoke was blamed for two near-collisions between airplanes in the skies of Northern California.

James Drago, a spokesman for the Interagency Fire Center at Boise, Ida., which coordinates firefighting efforts throughout the West, said conditions were looking better in all of the eight states where fires were still burning Sunday.

Two Dozen Homes Lost

Thus far, he said, a total of 1,252 fires have destroyed two dozen homes and blackened 480,000 acres of forest and rangeland. About 200 fires, he said, are still out of control, while more than 1,000 had been either controlled or partially contained.

“The situation has definitely improved since the weather changed last Thursday,” he said. “But you’ve got to remember that there is still a lot of lumber and watershed still going up in smoke, the manpower situation is still critical--and these fires are still claiming human lives. . . .”

Drago was referring to the Saturday accident in which one young man was killed and nine others injured when a four-foot-diameter Douglas fir tree fell on their California Conservation Corps truck as it headed for a fire in the Six Rivers National Forest about 200 miles north of San Francisco.

Authorities Sunday identified the victim as Sir Isaac Lindsay, 18, of Rialto.

Seven Other Men Released

Seven other men who were injured in the mishap were released after treatment, but Lonnie Gonzales, 19, of Sacramento and Rick Gustofason, 20, of Bakersfield were hospitalized at Redding for treatment of back and internal injuries. Both were reported in good condition.

California’s biggest fire continued to be the 121,467-acre blaze in Stanislaus National Forest, but Patrick Kaunert of the U.S. Forest Service, was cautiously optimistic.

“We are now fighting the fire on our terms,” Kaunert said. “If we can get some decent containment, most people could re-enter their homes here within the next 48 hours.”

A field observer, Kaunert was monitoring back-burning south of the Tuolumne River canyon in an area where flames consumed a $100,000 house in the eastern part of the 1,000-home Pine Mountain Lake community subdivision northeast of Groveland on Thursday.

Pine Mountain Lake and Groveland were both evacuated Wednesday and at that time, Kaunert said, “it seemed an impossible fire with large blazes burning together and erratic winds. It was difficult to predict.”

Winds were much more stable and predictable, however, Saturday and Sunday after the lightning storms that ignited hundreds of fires a week earlier had died. Kaunert said fire-fighting strategies were now designed to corral the fire around threatened residential areas allowing refugees to return to their homes.

“We . . . managed to save most of the homes,” he said. “Now we have something to work with.”

About 250 evacuees were allowed to return to their homes in Tuolumne City on Sunday morning, but hundreds of firefighters were still on the lines to keep the northern flank of the Stanislaus Complex fire from jumping the Cottonwood Road, which was the last holding area before the fire could expand in a northeasterly direction and threaten Twain Harte and Mi-Wuk Village subdivisions southeast of California 108.

Hold the Line

Kirk Landuyt, California Department of Forestry spokesman, said it was important to hold the fire there.

“If they lose it beyond Cottonwood Road there is no getting at it,” Landuyt said. He estimated that the 173-square-mile Stanislaus Complex fire was 35% contained and moving toward mostly uninhabited areas, except on its northeastern and southern edges. “From there it is wide open and it would run.”

But U.S. Forest Service spokesman Dick Wisehart said fire crews are concentrating on those areas where homes are in jeopardy. He said the Paper-Cabin fire, a 51,400-acre blaze that is part of the Stanislaus Complex and rages east and southeast of Tuolumne City, has been 75% contained.

The blaze moved into Yosemite in three locations, burning about 500 acres, and earlier had crept to within half a mile of the Merced Grove stand of rare Sequoia redwoods at the park’s southeastern corner. But officials said the grove was no longer in danger Sunday.

The National Weather Service said there was a “slight threat” of new thunderstorms for the next day or so, but predicted cooler temperatures--and not much wind.

Meanwhile, expectations rose Sunday morning at the Motherlode Fairgrounds in Sonora where evacuees from Tuolumne City--some of the first to arrive there earlier in the week--were told they could go home.

“Some of you are going home,” U.S. Forest Service spokesman Briscoe Price told a group of evacuees just after an outdoor church service on the grounds. The announcement was followed by cheers and applause.

Fearful of Looting

“It tickles us that we’re going home, although people have been great down here,” said Trenton Wann, 69, who had been sleeping in a station wagon with his wife Helen, 73. Wann said his first concern was to see if nothing had been looted from the couple’s home.

Many of the 1,200 refugees at the fairgrounds, though, were still waiting for re-entry notices.

Anita Yoder, American Red Cross spokeswoman, said the organization would continue to provide food, clothing and medical supplies for those returning to their Sierra foothills homes. Most of those expenses are paid for by private donations that reach the American Red Cross from throughout the state, she said.

Some members of the five families who lost their homes in the fire said they, too, would return.

Becky Konrath, who lost her mountain cabin 15 miles east of Tuolumne City, said there was never any question.

“It (the loss of the home) hurt,” she said. “But it never broke our spirit. We are going back and build it the way it was.”

Aviation authorities said smoke and haze from the fires in Northern California had reduced visibility to one-quarter mile late Saturday when a private plane and a four-engine Pacific Southwest Airlines jet came within 200 feet of each other.

Takes Evasive Action

PSA spokesman Jeremy James said the jet, with 27 passengers on board, took evasive action 20 miles southeast of Oakland. No injuries or damage were reported. The Federation Aviation Administration was investigating.

Earlier Saturday, the pilot of a single-engine Cessna 150 reported that he came dangerously close to another aircraft because of the smoke southeast of Salinas. An FAA spokesman said the pilot did not immediately file a “near-miss’ report, however.

Other large fires in California included a series of fires that consumed 63,000 acres in the Mendocino National Forest, 100 miles north of San Francisco; the Mendenhall Complex fire that burned about 52,000 acres but was mostly contained, with full containment expected Monday; the Fouts fire, which covered about 10,000 acres 15 miles north of Clearlake and remained out of control despite the efforts of 300 firefighters; an estimated 153 separate fires in the Klamath National Forest of Northern California, which have blackened about 95,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes, and 73 fires that have burned about 49,000 acres in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

In Oregon, the last evacuees returned to their homes Sunday as firefighters turned their attention to wildfires that have been raging unchecked through valuable timber.

With crews gaining ground on forest fires that threatened homes, and with about 650 Army reinforcements on their way from Ft. Ord, Calif., professional firefighters were being shifted to the two fires that have blackened a total of 25,600 acres of timber in the Siskiyou National Forest.

Evacuation orders that had kept 1,000 people from their rural homes around Myrtle Creek and farther south at Takilma were lifted Saturday night, and Jim Fisher, spokesman for the Oregon Unified Coordination Group in Salem, said other crews weary from the weeklong battle were being rotated through camps where they would get a solid day of rest.

8,311 on Fire Lines

A total of 8,311 firefighters were assigned to blazes that have charred 99,240 acres in the state since they were ignited by a lightning storm Aug. 30.

Law enforcement officials pointed out that timber wasn’t the only valuable crop being destroyed by the fires. Marijuana was burning, too. Jackson County Sheriff C. W. Smith said there was “no way to know” how many growers were getting “smoked out,” but added his hope is that there would be many.

“We’ve seen all sorts of strange vehicles hauling through here in the evenings,” said Sgt. Carl Green, a squadron leader from the 186th Infantry Division of the Oregon National Guard. “There’s no doubt exactly what’s going on; there aren’t any houses up there.”

Elsewhere in the West, fires were smaller.

In Idaho, about a dozen fires had burned 35,000 acres but the state was down to two active fires: the 18,000-acre Deadwood Summit fire near the southeastern community of Pocatello and the 10,500-acre Harrington Fork fire in the Sawtooth National Forest. Both were still out of control, but the Deadwood Summit fire was being allowed to burn because of the cost of battling it in steep mountainous terrain up to 8,700 feet in elevation.

In Arizona, fires burned 4,000 acres in the Tonto National Forest 50 miles northeast of Phoenix, 1,300 acres across the Colorado River from Needles, and 25 acres near Payson. A prairie fire started by lightning burned 1,500 acres on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota, and a half-dozen fires burned 725 acres in central Montana.

In Washington, 2,600 acres burned, including a 355-acre fire north of Spokane, and a 2,150-acre blaze near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and a 90-acre fire smoldered in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.