The Gifford Fire hasn’t grown in more than a week, but there are still more than 1,400 personnel working on repair work and watching for hot spots within the massive burn area. 

JT Sohr, an operations section chief for the 131,614-acre blaze, said the rugged, steep terrain is keeping crews from increasing the 95% containment. 

There are safety concerns, and “we can only get so many people out there to address those uncontained lines” on the northwest end of the fire, he said in a community meeting Monday. 

Oak trees and other vegetation can hold heat and cause smoke within the fire perimeter, but crews are “not going 500 feet or a mile within the black to chase those things,” he said. 

“The fire is fuels-limited at this point,” fire behavior analyst Patrick Doyle said.

Infrared shows some isolated heat within the burn area, but most fuels have already been burned, he added. 

Sohr said crews are working on suppression repair, which means repairing roads and bulldozer lines and other man-made effects of firefighting. 

It also means removing equipment. 

“Well over 150 miles of fire hose needs to be pulled off the fire line, tested, washed, rolled and made available for another fire,” fire officials said. 

“You’re probably going to see a decrease in personnel over the next couple weeks,” said Michael Page, incident commander. 

They plan to establish a new fire camp near Pozo, in San Luis Obispo County, and reduce personnel at the Santa Maria and Santa Margarita Ranch camps, Page said. 

“Ideally, what you guys see is less and less of us and more and more of what you would consider normal day-to-day life,” Page said. 

The California Interagency Incident Management Team 8 took over the incident from CIIMT5 one week ago and will stay on as incident command for another week before turning it over to local agencies, Page said. 

Forest Closure and Damage Assessments 

Michael Papa of the Los Padres National Forest is on the Burn Area Emergency Response team for the Gifford Fire. 

He said assessment teams are looking at the soil burn severity and determining what needs to be done to stabilize infrastructure to make it through the winter. 

Most of the Gifford Fire burn area is within the national forest, which has a large closure in effort for roads, trails and recreation areas. 

The current forest closure could be reduced soon for the southern portion, according to Jeanne Dawson of the Los Padres National Forest. 

“It’s our goal to get people back out into the national forest, but right now we need to prioritize firefighter safety and public safety by keeping the area closed,” she said. 

Teams are still assessing damage to recreational sites, she added.