Shasta Residents Return; Fire Threat Easing

Residents of several small rural communities in Shasta County returned to their fire-ravaged towns Sunday, while fire officials sounded more optimistic about gaining the upper hand over the plague of fires that has consumed more than 97,700 acres in six counties over the past week.

“Overall, we’re in better shape,” said State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Frank Mosbacher. “We have more fires in 100% containment and we have fewer communities threatened.”

In Round Mountain, a community of 810 people in the center of the fire-scarred Shasta region, residents came back to find the general store and the post office intact, but part of the elementary school burned.

Evacuated residents also were allowed to return to the communities of Moose Camp, Montgomery Creek and Hillcrest, officials said.

Although four fires in drought-parched areas of the state were declared totally or largely contained by Sunday, another 2,000 firefighters from out of state were being called in to battle four more still largely unchecked fires.

These included two new blazes that erupted Sunday, one in the Los Padres National Forest and a 600-acre fire south of Bakersfield. Meanwhile, the Fountain fire in Shasta County has burned more than 64,000 acres and was only 30% contained after four days.

Sixteen wildfires have scorched nearly 300,000 acres of range and forest in Idaho and Oregon. The largest is a 235,000-acre fire raging largely out of control east of Boise.

Eight California fires have destroyed 328 homes and 366 other structures, state officials said. More than 7,400 local, state and federal firefighters, at a cost of more than $18 million, have been used to fight the blazes, officials said.

A 7,760-acre fire in the Inyo National Forest no longer threatens the resort village of Mammoth Lakes, Mosbacher said.

Predicted northerly winds remained a worry to firefighting efforts elsewhere, particularly in Northern California where crews fought to prevent the Shasta County blaze from crossing the Pit River into the Shasta National Forest.

In Round Mountain, tall oak, pine and cedar trees smoldered in the hill community as Bob Hewitt found the feed store he and his wife run still standing. But in the capricious way of fires, the trailer home they shared, just 30 yards away, was a pile of twisted metal and rubble.

The home was one of 286 dwellings and 249 structures lost in the Fountain fire, officials said. The fire consumed more than 38,000 acres of private land where an estimated 585-million board feet of timber, valued at $171 million, was burned. Officials estimated half of that wood could be salvaged.

In all, nearly 2,500 firefighters, including 600 prison inmates working as ground crews, have been fighting the blaze.

Walking through the damage, Hewitt found the remains of a wine bottle, misshapen as the glass had melted and hardened. Nearby was his grandson’s charred red wagon and the blackened body of a chicken lying next to a fence.

As he picked through his vegetable patch, he found that the potatoes he planted, still underground, had been cooked when the fire heated the soil.

“I never saw anything like that in my life,” Hewitt said, as he dug up his spuds and displayed their soft insides.

Across the street, Bessie and Glenn Smith, both 76, were surprised to find their home intact, along with a mud turtle that had survived the fire and was sitting in their driveway.

“I can’t believe this is still standing,” Bessie Smith said, sounding almost guilty over her good fortune. Residents since 1946, the couple are among the old-timers who increasingly share their town with younger professionals who commute to areas such as Redding, about 30 miles away.

One commuter, Frank Merryman, was at his paint store in Redding when his wife, Rhonda, and three children evacuated.

The fire came like “a big wall,” Rhonda Merryman said. “We grabbed what we could and left.”

Now, the house where they had lived for seven years was gone.

“There’s no rhyme or reason to it,” Frank Merryman said, devastated. “We were so happy here. We didn’t need a vacation. We just stayed here.”

Nearby, retired school teacher Matt Rumboltz, 84, walked on ground that ashes had left gray and black as the acrid smell of smoke filled his nostrils. The five-room log house he and his late wife built in 1937 was destroyed. All he was grateful for, he said, was that his wife had not lived to see the devastation.

“At least she was given that reprieve,” he said.

While the 700-acre Cachuma fire in the Los Padres National Forest, 20 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, was declared 100% contained, Ventura County firefighters continued to battle a 100-acre blaze in an area so remote that crews were being dropped off by helicopter.

The blaze, called the Rancho fire, was spotted at 10:40 a.m. Sunday in the Dick Smith Wilderness Area of the Los Padres National Forest, about 18 miles northwest of Ojai.

Meanwhile, the Rainbow fire in Inyo National Forest was declared 20% contained, with no structures destroyed, and a 6,400-acre fire near the Trinity County town of Hayfork was 70% contained, officials said.

An 800-acre fire near Fiddletown in El Dorado County was in the last stages of control, state spokesman Mosbacher said, while the 17,386-acre Old Gulch fire in Calaveras County was declared totally controlled.

According to the federal Interagency Fire Center in Boise, 14 fires were burning in Idaho, and two in Oregon. Officials said an estimated 9,200 firefighters were on the fire lines in the western states.

Paddock reported from Round Mountain and McMillan from Los Angeles. Staff writer Tina Daunt and correspondent Maia Davis contributed to this report.

California Wildfires

1. Fountain fire: Shasta County; 64,000 acres; 30% contained.

2. Rainbow fire: Inyo National Forest near Mammoth Lakes; 7,760 acres; 20% contained.

3. Barker fire: Trinity County near Hayfork; 6,400 acres; 70% contained.

4. Middle Ridge fire: Kern County south of Bakersfield; 600 acres;

no containment.

5. Rancho fire: Los Padres National Forest; 100 acres; no containment.

6. Cachuma fire: Los Padres National Forest; 700 acres; 100% contained.

7. Farnham fire: El Dorado County; 800 acres; 100% contained.

8. Old Gulch fire: Calaveras County; 17,386 acres; 100% contained and controlled.