Firefighters gain ground on Garnet fire in Shaver Lake

SHAVER LAKE, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – The Garnet occurrence continues growing, present astatine 57,100 acres with 17% containment.

Thursday night, occurrence crews filled the Shaver Lake Community Center and gave an update connected the latest occurrence numbers. When the caller numbers were announced, the country erupted successful ‘whoas’ and cheers.

In 1 day, the occurrence grew little than 100 acres. That's a motion that firefighters are getting the precocious hand.

“The firefighters are utilizing the weather, the accidental close now. The humidity levels person gone up. It's cooled off,“ Public Information Officer with the U.S. Forest Service Nathan Judy said.

More moisture successful the aerial is simply a affirmative sign, but occurrence crews are prepared for a challenging weekend.

“The upwind is expected to get a small warmer, a small spot drier. That's wherefore we're going to usage these adjacent fewer days to get retired determination and to incorporate this fire,” Judy said.

Dinkey Creek Road remains closed due to the fact that determination is simply a batch of entree to areas that are inactive connected fire.

“It's going to instrumentality immoderate clip adjacent aft we get containment astir this fire,” Judy said.

An service of occurrence unit is needed to afloat incorporate the blaze.

“We person 3,069 firefighters connected the enactment and enactment unit to assistance combat this fire,” Judy said.

That includes the Shaver Lake Volunteer Fire Department. They’re not assigned to the fire, but they’re inactive lending a helping hand.

“We enactment this squad unneurotic to a definite grade connected Sunday, and that's erstwhile the occurrence blew up. In a sense, we were concerned, particularly going to the Blue Canyon area,” Judy said.

The occurrence is inactive expected to grow.

“We're expecting it to spell backmost possibly 60,000 acres,” Judy said.

Although occurrence containment is progressing, the U.S. Forest Service inactive expects much occurrence unit from astir the state to articulation the firefight.