Cal Fire and other fire agencies are already stretched. Since Aug. 15, California has seen 12,000 lightning strikes, and 585 new fires burning for nearly a total of one million acres.
"That’s significant for us," Cal Fire Monterey-San Benito Unit Chief David Fulcher said in a briefing on Saturday, Aug. 21.
And now they're bracing for more. The weather report calls for more dry lightning beginning around 5am on Sunday, and potential gusts of wind. As a precautionary measure, officials have ordered some 20,000 people in Monterey County to evacuate in case the Carmel and River fires change course and move to the west, with evacuation advisories in effect for people living further to the west.
For now, the wind continues to blow from the northwest, and the fires are growing to the southeast.
But firefighters working the Carmel Fire on the afternoon of Aug. 22 were specifically aiming to build a secure break between the fire line and the eastern side of Carmel Valley Village. Working near Sleepy Hollow, a crew from a multi-agency strike team worked to put out any remaining hot spots from a back burn two days prior, a step to eliminate fuel for the fire. On Thursday, they'd burned an area from the Carmel River up to the ridgetop east of Los Tulares adjacent to a fire line cut by a bulldozer.
That's next to the third dozer line, a standard for Cal Fire in building fire breaks; there's a primary line, followed by a secondary outer line, then that third contingency line in hopes of stopping fire from spreading.
With crew members from local fire departments—Seaside, Marina, Greenfield—and as far away as Redlands, Santa Barbara and Rancho Cucamonga, as well as from the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire, they dipped into the Carmel River for water to clean up the backburn area.
In addition, aircraft flew in on Saturday afternoon to drop water from above. Aircraft are moving between the Carmel and River fires and the Dolan Fire in Big Sur, as they are able to safely fly with heavy smoke conditions limiting visibility.
These crew members work 24 hours on and 24 hours off, rotating in where they're needed. "We're tired," says Lee Murray, a Seaside firefighter working on the multi-agency strike team near Sleep Hollow on Saturday. "We're off unless they call us in, and if they call us in we'll be here."