Rocky Fire burns 65,000 acres, crosses Highway 20

UPDATE: As of 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Rocky Fire had grown to 65,000 acres


LAKE COUNTY, Calif. (KTVU) - After tripling in size over the weekend, Lake County's "Rocky Fire" gained only two thousand acres on Monday.

That brought it to 62,000 acres, the best day yet for firefighters who have often had to stand back or chase the fire, instead of fight it.

"It's a mean fire," Novato Fire Captain Adam Black told KTVU, "and some of these runs it's been taking, you just have to get out of the way."

White is part of a strike team from Marin County: five engines, and 22 people, who are working 24 hour shifts.

Monday night, they were among hundreds of firefighters taking positions on the south side of Highway 20, to keep it from jumping to the north side.

Huge swaths of hills near Wilbur Springs were crackling with fire, the dense brush a fiery tangle, flaring with every wind gust.

Most highways are natural firebreaks, but Highway 20 was no obstacle for a fire this aggressive.

It spotted over the highway in several places late Monday, making aggressive runs that sent a second huge plume into the sky.

"The fire activity here has been amazing," admitted Captain Black, "every time a spark hits these fuels, they just take off like gasoline. I've never seen anything like this in Northern California."

The strike team left Marin on July 23, headed to the Wragg Fire in Napa County, then the Lowell fire in the Sierra, and now this one, without a break.

"They're all burning with intensities that we have never seen," Captain Joel White of the Marinwood Fire Dept. told KTVU, "and people are putting in long hours, with little rest or recovery in between."

Most nights, the crews are eating freeze-dried meals from their fire engines, and sleeping on bedrolls on the ground.

The Rocky Fire has been especially challenging because it's had multiple heads, churning through the steep canyons in different directions simultaneously.

"We don't put people out in front of the fire, we don't put people in harm's way if we can help it," explained Captain White, "but we're fighting aggressively with aircraft and with boots on the ground."

"We expect up-canyon winds, and then they shift down, we expect winds from the west, then they curl around east," said Captain Black, describing the unpredictable conditions, "it's very dangerous and keeping the crew safe, that's the number one priority."

Containment, as of Monday night, sat at 12 percent with 12,000 people under mandatory or voluntary evacuation, and 24 homes destroyed.

A Ventura County Fire Captain, assisting CalFire, told KTVU he hopes everyone in California wildland areas is taking a lesson from Lake County's experience.

"Southern California hasn't even started burning yet," noted Capt. Steve Kaufmann, referring to the notorious Santa Ana winds that fan the flames in the southland.

"The time to leave your home is long before we try to get our fire engines into your neighborhood," declared Kaufmann, "because if we're competing for the road with people trying to leave, it's a disaster for both of us."