Crews Encircle Orange County Fire : 14-Mile Ring Around 5,000-Acre Blaze Nearly Complete

Firefighting crews picked their way along remote, craggy slopes of the Cleveland National Forest on Sunday, burning and cutting out brush as they neared completion of a 14-mile containment ring around the 5,000-acre fire started by an arsonist five days ago near Silverado Canyon in Orange County.

Aided by high humidity and light winds, firefighters finished 13 miles of the ring by late Sunday, and the U.S. Forest Service declared the fire fully contained at 6 p.m.

The 1,108 firefighters who battled the blaze Sunday devoted their efforts to clearing the last mile of the ring in the Coldwater Canyon area of the forest in Riverside County.

Steep terrain and the lack of fire roads in that area forced fire crews to rely on hand tools and flares instead of bulldozers and fire engines, forest service spokeswoman Carolyn Krupp said.

The fire is under investigation by arson experts.

So far, the cost of fighting the persistent fire in the forest’s rugged terrain has mounted to $1.3 million, Krupp said.

Meanwhile in Northern California, 10,000 firefighters continued to make headway against about 70 fires still burning in five national forests, where 439,409 acres have been blackened.

In the Shasta and Trinity national forests, where 76,739 acres have burned, the two largest fires were 85% contained Sunday, according to Ray Schaaf, a fire information officer in Redding, Calif. Full containment for these was projected for early this week, he added, although containment on 22 other smaller fires within the two forests might take one to three weeks.

A former top-priority fire in the Mendocino National Forest was declared contained after burning 83,972 acres, while the Stanislaus National Forest fire, where 139,060 acres were burned, was declared 90% contained, Schaaf said.

“We’re winding down,” he added, “but we haven’t released any crews in significant numbers. We’re resting them and reassigning them.”

One remaining trouble spot is the Klamath National Forest, where 139,638 acres have burned, with no estimates of full containment. Earlier, the Klamath had been a low-priority area to deploy firefighters, Schaaf said, “because it posed fewer threats to life and property. As we got more containment and control over other fires, the priorities shifted but in the meantime smoke filled the areas, vehicles couldn’t get in and caused work to be delayed.”