Dixie Fire Becomes CA's Second Largest Wildfire Ever

CALIFORNIA — The Dixie Fire became the Golden State's second-largest wildfire ever recorded on Sunday as the blaze has ripped through 463,477 acres.

The fire decimated the historic town of Greenville and has destroyed more than 580 homes and structures in its path.

"Our hearts ache for this town," Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted Saturday after surveying the damage in Greenville.

A thick layer of smoke that held down winds and temperatures in the zone of the largest single wildfire in California history cleared Monday from Northern California's forestlands, allowing firefighting aircraft to rejoin the firefight to corral the destructive Dixie Fire.

The newly cleared skies will hand more visibility to more than two dozen helicopters and two air tankers that have been grounded to fly again and make it safer for ground crews to maneuver.

"With this kind of weather, fire activity will pick up. But the good thing is we can get aircraft up," said fire spokesman Ryan Bain.

While 27 people were safely located, at least four Greenville residents were still unaccounted for on Sunday, according to the Plumas County Sheriff's Office. Officials sought the public's help on Sunday to find the following Greenville residents: Lillian Basham, Joseph Basham, Blanca Auban and Michael Auban.

The fire, which also became the largest active wildfire burning in the United States, was just 21 percent contained as of Monday. Officials remapped the fire zone this week, which dropped containment from 35 percent, Rick Carhart, a Cal Fire spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Once we got in there and were able to do some better mapping, we found…there is a whole lot more un-contained line out there," Carhart told the newspaper.

On Saturday night, the Dixie Fire charred another 725 square miles, an area more than twice the size of New York City.

Smoke hung over the area for days was hampering visibility for firefighters, but it did ward off heat from the sun and hold down winds that fanned the fire's growth last week.

As the smoke began to clear on Sunday, dry winds returned, posing risk for firefighters working to protect some 14,000 buildings in the northern Sierra Nevada.

"The live trees that are out there now have a lower fuel moisture than you would find when you go to a hardware store or a lumber yard and get that piece of lumber that’s kiln dried," Mark Brunton, operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said at a news briefing Sunday morning. "It’s that dry, so it doesn’t take much for any sort of embers, sparks or small flaming front to get that going."

On Sunday, crews shifted priority to protect homes in Crescent Mills, Hunt Valley and Westwood.

"We’re seeing fire activity that even veteran firefighters haven’t seen in their career," Edwin Zuniga, a Cal Fire spokesman, told The Washington Post. "So we’re just in really uncharted territory."

As firefighters worked to set up containment lines, emergency evacuation orders were extended to residents in three areas of Plumas County, including the Antelope Lake arena. Those who need assistance with transportation were urged to call the sheriff's office at 530-283-6414.

"If you are still in the area you are in imminent danger you must leave now. If you remain emergency responders may not be able to assist you," officials from the Plumas County Sheriff's Office said.

Crews had constructed 465 miles of line around the massive blaze over the weekend, but officials were only confident that about 20 percent of the line was secure, Deputy Incident Commander Chris Waters said.

"Every bit of that line needs to be constructed, staffed, mopped up and actually put to bed before we can call this fire fully contained," Waters said during Saturday evening’s incident briefing.

Firefighters have struggled to corral the blaze amid hot weather and historically dry brush.

"Fuel moisture remains historically low and has caused difficulty in suppressing the fire spread," Cal Fire officials wrote in an update Saturday.

The fire was on track this week to become the largest fire in Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascades history, Scott Stephens, a professor of fire sciences at the University of California, Berkeley told the Washington Post.

The Dixie Fire, along with the River Complex Fire, shrouded much of Northern California in smoke over the weekend, triggering the extension of an air quality advisory for smoke through Saturday, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said.

While an official cause for the fire has not been declared, Pacific Gas & Electric said its equipment may have sparked a smaller blaze that later merged with the Dixie Fire, according to a report released by the utility last month.

A repair man reportedly spotted what he suspected to be a blown fuse while he was responding to an outage in Feather River Canyon off of Highway 70 in Oroville, PG&E said. Due to rough terrain and road work, the worker could not reach the pole for several hours, the utility said. By the time he reached the area, two or three blown fuses may have sparked a fire at the base of a healthy green tree leaning on the pole that held the conductor.

The Dixie Fire sparked on July 14, a day after the utility's repair man discovered the flawed equipment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

READ MORE:

• PG&E Says Its Equipment May Have Sparked NorCal Fire
• CA Town Destroyed, 8 Missing In Largest Active Wildfire In U.S.