Incident commanders hope an influx of personnel, aircraft and other firefighting tools will boost efforts to corral the Gifford Fire in the coming days, as the footprint expanded to 72,460 acres as of Monday night.
The fire started Friday afternoon near the Gifford Trailhead northeast of Santa Maria and forced the closure of Highway 166.
As of Monday night, the blaze threatened 872 structures, and the firefighting force had grown to 1,910 personnel.
“We’re able to not just work on the direct control lines against the fire’s edge, which was our primary objective, but we’re also able to start reaching further out and developing contingency lines just to give us higher probabilities of success,” said Patrick Byde, division chief of operations for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department and incident commander in the Unified Command.
On Tuesday, the team expects a boost in the aerial resources, including up to 14 helicopters, a fleet expected to deliver very significant water drops, the U.S. Forest Service said.
Those would be in addition to the fixed-wing planes, including some those using the Santa Maria Public Airport’s Air Tanker Base to reload retardant — benefitting the firefighting effort due the proximity to the blaze.
“We’re seeing really short turnaround times on those resources, which is really to our advantage,” Byde said.
Hot weather, low humidity, windy conditions, troublesome terrain, and extremely dry vegetation — including tall grass and chaparral — have made the battle more challenging.
“This is an area that’s just prone to large fire growth,” Byde said.
Reaching the fire’s perimeter can require extended travel time for crews getting to their assignments, adding to challenges to increasing containment above the current 3%.
“We still have low containment, but we are gaining some progress. It’s a challenging incident,” he added.
As the fire’s size and the personnel number grow, Forest Service officials have started exploring creating two new base camps to allow quicker access to the burning areas on the north and east.
The Gifford Fire, the largest blaze currently burning in California, will keep Highway 166 closed at least through Wednesday as the firefighting efforts continue.
“It’s a unique area here because the 166 is a major highway through a national forest, so you have the unholy union of light flashy fuels and major vehicle traffic,” said Flemming Bertelsen, a Forest Service public information officer.
“So it’s not uncommon to have these roadside starts.”
Shortly after the fire began, callers told California Highway Patrol officers about sparks coming from a vehicle traveling on its rims and igniting the nearby vegetation.
Normally, fires along Highway 166, a primary connection between the Central Coast and the southern San Joaquin Valley, occur primarily on just one side of the road, allowing firefighters to use the highway as a containment line.
“The fire is just going gang-busters in both directions,” he added.
Firefighting efforts involve a unified command by the U.S. Forest Service and Santa Barbara County Fire Department, with a larger team arriving on the weekend.
Suppression efforts have been helped by last month’s Madre Fire burn scar.
That blaze sparked July 2 off Highway 166 and consumed more than 80,000 acres, with 100% containment achieved just days before the Gifford Fire broke out.
Along with being advantageous having the Madre Fire footprint to the north and east to help limit the new fire’s growth, some of the same personnel were assigned to both incidents.
“It’s a pretty well-practiced workforce,” Byde said.
Within days of starting, each incident quickly became the largest out-of-control fire in the state.
The Madre Fire burned on federal lands in San Luis Obispo County, but the Gifford Fire also includes areas in Santa Barbara County.
Of California’s top 20 wildfires, two were in Santa Barbara County, including the December 2017 Thomas Fire that blackened 281,893 acres, some of Ventura County, and the July 2007 Zaca Fire that burned 240,207 acres entirely in Santa Barbara County.
Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties each have websites detailing evacuation orders and warnings for communities near the wildfire.
An air quality watch has been issued for most of Santa Barbara County, with an air quality alert issued for the Cuyama Valley. For air quality information, go to the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District’s website, www.ourair.org.
