“There has been some very intense fire activity,” said Dan McCaig, a public information officer with the U.S. Forest Service who is in charge of the land where the Dixie fire is burning. “Today we’ll see a 200-foot-tall flame again.”
This means that firefighters are not able to attack the fire directly from above – they are usually able to do so when the flames are four feet high – and instead focus on digging containment lines with bulldozers. is focused. goes.
Along those lines, fire officials said it must help protect Susanville from burns from last year’s fire. But a major concern with the unpredictability of winds is that embers can fly further and start fires.
“We’re really in a wave of wind right now,” said Lisa Bernard, a spokeswoman for the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office. “Definitely a threat.”
The economic base of county seat Susanville depends largely on the nearby prisons. The state recently announced plans to close a facility there; Criminal justice reforms, including sentencing, have led to a decline in the prisoner population.
The plan has been met with pushback from Susanville, which has filed a lawsuit against the state in an effort to prevent the shutdown and keep jobs and revenue there.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Dana Simas said Tuesday that the state has no plans to vacate prisons. She said the fire was about 13 miles away, and officials had taken steps to limit the impact of the unhealthy air by limiting the movement of people and distributing N95 masks.