Weather Helps Willow Fire Crews : Hope Grows as Rising Humidity and Dropping Winds Permit Inroads Against Mammoth San Bernardino County Blaze

Increasing humidity and decreasing winds helped more than 2,700 firefighters Thursday as they began to make headway against a begrudging wildfire that has burned for six days in the rugged back country of San Bernardino County.

“I’m optimistic,” Troy Corn, an information officer with the U.S. Forest Service, said Thursday afternoon. “I won’t say we’ve turned the corner, but we’re gaining on this thing.”

By nightfall Thursday, the fire had blackened more than 61,000 acres and was only 50% contained. Fire lines stretched more than 35 miles, and crew bosses said they would have to be extended twice that far before the blaze is brought under control.

No one was willing to make any predictions yet, but there was informal talk among crew chiefs that if the weather holds--and the forecasts looked pretty good--the magical hour of full containment could come as early as this weekend.

Even with that, however, firefighters would have to spend weeks more snuffing out hot spots and flare-ups.

Kristel Johnson, a forest service spokeswoman, said the main front of the so-called Willow fire was continuing to move to the northeast Thursday afternoon, out of the timbered mountains of the San Bernardino National Forest and onto the brush-covered slopes of the Mojave Desert near the communities of Apple Valley and Lucerne Valley.

“And we’re still having trouble up in the mountains, near Green Valley Lake,” Johnson said. “The fire is real stubborn there.”

She said more backfires were being lit near Green Valley Lake to create firebreaks.

“The winds are down to about 20 mph, which means they can bring in air tankers to back up the crews on the ground,” Johnson said. “That’s definitely a good sign.”

California 173 was closed between Lake Arrowhead and Summit Valley. Most major mountain roads in the national forest remained open, but a number of them were clogged with slow-moving firetrucks and other emergency vehicles.

At least 13 campgrounds in the national forest were closed, and officials said they were not expected to reopen until after Labor Day weekend.

Thursday evening’s roster showed that 113 fire engines, 16 tanker trucks, 18 bulldozers, 15 helicopters, about a dozen fixed-wing air tankers and 2,244 firefighters were deployed against the Willow fire. Officials said the cost of fighting the blaze so far was $3.35 million and is continuing to rise.

Fire maps drawn Thursday showed that about two-thirds of the land that had burned was mountainous national forest property. About one-quarter of the burned land was federal property overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, most of it on the high desert slopes south of Apple Valley and Lucerne Valley. The remaining one-twelfth of the land that burned was private property, most of it sparsely settled ranch acreage.

A dozen private homes had been damaged or destroyed, along with about 40 outbuildings. There were six reported injuries, none of them serious.

The only other Southern California wildfire still burning out of control Thursday was the so-called Bridge fire, in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Glendora.

That fire, centered near the junction of the west, north and east forks of the San Gabriel River in the Angeles National Forest, had charred about 7,000 acres of brush and damaged or destroyed about half a dozen cabins by sundown Thursday.

Officials said more than 1,000 firefighters were battling the Bridge fire, which was moving slowly uphill through steep terrain along the north fork of the river. The fire forced the closure of California 39 above Azusa and Glendora Mountain Road above Big Dalton Canyon.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Willow Fire

Road closures

* California 173 between Grass Valley Road in Lake Arrowhead and Summit Valley.

* Also closed are forest roads, trails and undeveloped areas of the San Bernardino National Forest north of California 18 and east of California 138.

Closed campgrounds: (through Labor Day)

Holcomb Valley, Green Valley, Crab Flats, Tent Peg, Little Bear Springs, Hanna Flat, Big Pine Flat, Horse Springs, Ironwood Group, Fisherman’s Group, Gray’s Peak Group, Tanglewood Group, Big Pine Flat Equestrian

Note: Up-to-date information on the Web: www.bigbear.com/willowincident

Source: Willow Incident Information Web Site