The ongoing wildfires in California have garnered some of the media and water-cooler attention they deserve but not nearly what they wholly deserve in my opinion. What attention has been thrown their way has gone to fires like the Ponderosa Incident which has charred over 20,000 acres on state and private lands and leveled 50 structures, many of them residences - with more acres and possibly more structures yet to be charred. Thousands of local residents of the fire area (in portions of rural Shasta and Tehama Counties) have been evacuated and many local and even two regional state highways have been closed. This fire is a really big deal as it has the potential to utterly level the towns of Shingletown in Shasta County and Manton in Tehama County.
Burning nearby is the Chips Incident in the Plumas National Forest in Plumas County which has also forced large-scale evacuations and charred over 62,000 acres and forced many local and at least three regional highways to close and disrupted power delivery to entire towns.
Yet another major nearby fire is the Reading Incident mostly in Lassen Volcanic National Park and in the Lassen National Forest in Shasta County. It was contained today at 28,143 acres with no structure loss but most definitely timber loss.
Vastly overlooked has been and continues to be the monstrous Rush Incident in eastern Lassen County which has burned over 313,000 acres and crossed the state line into Nevada in four separate areas of the fire's eastern margin. This overlooking by the media and water-cooler crowd is perhaps somewhat justifiable given this wildfire is burning in an even more rural area than the other three wildfires to its west. However, it is nonetheless within this region and it is effecting some people in a negative way. What is most significant about this fire to date is its incredible size. How much of it's 313,000+ acres are located in Nevada is unknown to me. However, looking at the fire map it is clear the vast majority of that acreage is located here in California. For comparisonal purposes it is worth noting that the current official largest fire (by acreage) in California history is 2003's Cedar Fire in San Diego County which charred 273,246 acres, burned 2,820 structures (mostly homes) and most significantly, killed 15 people including one firefighter. You can do the math yourself; obviously the Rush Fire is California's latest largest wildfire. It is merely awaiting official confirmation and acknowledgement once it is put out and the final acreage is tallied. It is worth taking a gander at CAL FIRE's current 20 Largest California Wildland Fires (By Acreage Burned) page before it is updated and the current #20 gets dropped from the list (2006's Bar Complex in Trinity County at 100,414 acres).
Final Update (8/28/12): Thru today this fire has consumed 271,911 acres in California and 43,666 acres in Nevada for a total of 315,577 acres. Thus this fire has been downgraded by better mapping by means of G.I.S. technology and is now just short of eclipsing the Cedar Fire as the largest fire in California history by less than 2,000 acres. However, there are two caveats. First, the terrain this fire is burning is perhaps flatter overall than that which the Cedar Fire consumed making the Cedar Fire perhaps larger in surface area burned but not acreage burned given that acreage refers to a flat surface area on a map and is not a measure of the actual surface area of a given burn area factoring in vertical relief.
With 82% containment and only minor interior creeping occuring it seems likely these numbers will continue to rise but only to a minor degree unless some extraordinary wind event blows this fire across containment lines that are holding for now. I have already updated this multiple times and more updates are likely and they may ultimately reflect that the Rush Incident is larger in area than the Cedar Fire after all as was originally thought up to as recently as just a day ago.
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