Crews bumped Gifford Fire containment to 97% this week and are preparing to move most personnel to the northern end of the burn scar.
Damage assessments are being conducted for Los Padres National Forest infrastructure, Highway 166 and the landscape itself.
The wildfire started along Highway 166 on Aug. 1 and has burned 131,614 acres. The cause is under investigation, but the blaze was first reported as several small fires along the highway. California Highway Patrol officials said the fires were possibly sparked by a motorist driving on a metal rim after a flat tire.
Officials released the soil burn severity map this week, which is part of the assessment done by the U.S. Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response team.
“Yes, soil burns, not just vegetation,” said Michael Papa, a Los Padres National Forest employee on the Gifford Fire’s BAER team.
The soil burn severity of each area depends on geology, topography and fire behavior, including how quickly the blaze moved through, he said.
The map shows low-severity burn areas in blue, moderate in yellow, and high-severity burn areas in red. Most of the map shows low- and moderate-severity burns.
“Ultimately what we’re looking at is what we need to do as a forest to stabilize the infrastructure to make it through the first winter” after a wildfire, Papa said. Post-fire flooding and debris flows are a concern, since fires burn away stabilizing vegetation.
Suppression repair work is happening in the Gifford Fire burn scar to address man-made firefighting impacts to the land and infrastructure, like fixing fences and bull dozer lines through the forest.
“After that, we move into the rehabilitation of the forest, and that’s a longer-term process, a two-to-five-year process,” Papa said.
BAER assessments look at the burn severity and values at risk – like critical habitat and recreation areas.
“We look at three tiers of treatment: natural recovery; closure or limited restriction to access to the area; and then if neither of those meet the objective, we look at some sort of treatment to stabilize the environment or infrastructure,” Papa said.
Highway 166 Repairs
Caltrans crews have been working on Highway 166 to repair fire damage and prepare for the rainy season. The highway was closed when the fire started and reopened on Aug. 13.
It’s a major connecting route between the Central Valley and the coast. When the roadway is closed, the detour makes the typical one-hour trip between Santa Maria and Cuyama into a three-hour journey.
Workers are still doing repairs for the Gifford and Madre fires along the highway, Caltrans District 5 spokesman Kevin Drabinski said.
Most of the guardrail repairs and rock scaling along slopes is done, although they are still checking areas for possible damage.
Crews have been replacing damaged culverts and clearing out undamaged culverts so debris is removed before winter rains, he said.
“Another focus for us continues to be the clearing out catchment areas, which are designed to collect runoff and debris from slopes,” Drabinski said Friday. That work could result in one-way traffic control, and delays for drivers, along the 20 miles of highway affected by the fires.
“Repair work requiring any lane closures was suspended this week while work on the Highway 41/46 interchange was taking place, so as to keep Highway 166 open as a viable east/west alternate route,” he noted.
