Crews Close to Encircling Silverado Fire

The arson fire that began in Silverado Canyon last week had consumed nearly 5,000 acres of forest land along the Orange-Riverside county line Saturday and was 70% contained.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Tom Horner said the blaze was expected to be fully contained by tonight.

More than 1,200 firefighters struggled Saturday to complete the 14-mile containment ring around the fire, which briefly threatened homes in several of the area’s steep, sparsely populated canyons.

While stronger winds Saturday caused the fire to flare for a time, the winds also aided efforts to set backfires between the main blaze and the containment lines, Horner said. The backfires consumed about 1,500 of the 5,000 acres.

‘End in Sight’

The thrust of the fight Saturday against the stubborn fire, which began Wednesday, was north of Santiago Peak in the Cleveland National Forest, where crews slowly picked their way along ridges and rocky slopes, clearing brush and using flares to set backfires. Five air tankers and four helicopters dumped fire-retardant chemicals and water.

“We can see the end in sight,” Horner said. “By Sunday night we should have this thing corralled.”

Even as the fire continued burning Saturday, a forest service team of experts began examining the charred slopes to determine the damage. The amount of lost vegetation must be assessed, Horner said, before reseeding can begin, possibly as early as this week. The major concern will be erosion and flooding during the rainy season.

“The rehabilitation team will look at how badly the soil was damaged and how much vegetation survived before making recommendations on how to restore those burned-out areas,” Horner said.

Throughout the state Saturday, firefighters continued to gain ground on scores of other large forest fires. However, their success was marred by the death of a firefighter who was killed by a falling tree in the Stanislaus National Forest. The fatality was the fourth since a wave of lightning-caused brush fires hit California two weeks ago.

David Ross Erickson, a 34-year-old U.S. Forest Service firefighter from Etna, Calif., was cutting a tree that fell and struck a second tree, which in turn fell on him, killing him instantly Friday, an forest service spokesman said Saturday.

More than 100 firefighters working on the fires have been treated for injuries, many of them for smoke inhalation.

The three previous deaths were caused by vehicle accidents. Two of them, both linked to smoke-limited visibility, occurred in the Klamath National Forest, parts of which have worse smoke pollution than Los Angeles during heavy smog, a state medical officer said.

Most of the major fires that have charred 750,000 acres in California and Oregon were reported increasingly nearer to containment Saturday. But the Klamath forest remained the biggest headache for firefighters in California. About 47 fires there, most of them yet to be contained, had destroyed 143,600 acres.

Statewide, 160 of the 1,247 fires that have broken out in the last two weeks were still not contained Saturday. They have destroyed 553,000 acres.

In Northern California, officials said the 136,600-acre Stanislaus National Forest blaze was 90% contained Saturday.

“We’ve got cooler temperatures, and that’s helping some. But we’re still asking that people be careful. We’re all worn out,” a state Department of Forestry spokesman said.