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Two Much Bigger Fires Have Been Burning on Los Padres All Summer
The Timber Fire is 25,000 acres and 59 percent contained after six weeks. The Plaskett is nearly 30,000 and all but out. Neither got a fraction of the attention Yosemite did.
The Timber Fire started on August 9 and has reached 25,443 acres at 59 percent containment, with 704 personnel still assigned as of mapping done this morning. The Plaskett Fire started August 26, reached 29,993 acres and is 97 percent contained. Both are on the Los Padres National Forest.
Between them that is roughly 55,000 acres, against the Dome Fire's 3,795. The Dome Fire has had national coverage since the day it started, because it is inside Yosemite and visible from a road that tourists drive. The Los Padres fires are in country that people from Los Angeles and the Central Coast actually use, and they have been burning for six and seven weeks with a fraction of the attention.
That imbalance is worth naming because it has a practical cost. If you are planning anything on the Los Padres this autumn — Big Sur backcountry, the Ventana, the coastal ranges — the closures and the burn damage from these two are far more likely to affect you than anything in Yosemite.
Fire in this country leaves problems behind for years rather than weeks. Burned slopes above trails shed rock, root-burned trees fall without warning in the first winter storms, and drainages that carried a trickle can move debris after the first serious rain. A containment figure is not a reopening, and a reopening is not a return to how it was.
Check the forest's own alert page before committing to a route. Both fires are logged on the interagency incident system with daily updates, which is more current than anything a news site will carry once a fire stops being novel.
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