Major wildfire west of Yosemite near containment

By Colleen Valles
The Fresno Bee - August 23, 2001

COULTERVILLE, Calif. (AP) -- Cooler weather and lighter winds helped firefighters get a handle on the 11,500-acre Creek fire just west of Yosemite National Park, allowing more than 400 residents to return to their homes Thursday.

The fire, thought to have been intentionally set, was 85 percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry. At one point, the fire in Mariposa and Tuolumne counties threatened 3,000 structures.

With a return to hot weather expected this weekend, firefighters were hoping to make a line around the fire by Thursday evening and fully contain it by Saturday. Even so, more than 2,000 firefighters were still battling the blaze.

Firefighters from outside the area were to be sent home Thursday, fire officials said.

The fire has injured eight people, destroyed four residences and four outbuildings. It burned near scores of more homes set amid the Sierra Nevada foothills, but left them undamaged.

"A lot of people have gotten through and said in our neighborhood we were spared," said Casey

Garrigan, a resident of Greeley Hill. "We were smiling all day today."

In more good news, the fire apparently did little damage to the watershed around Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which supplies water to the San Francisco area.

Northern California remained a focus of firefighting in the West as rain helped firefighters stanch blazes in Oregon and Washington.

Across the region, 28 major fires were burning Thursday, down from 32 the day before, said Davida Canahan of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

"The weather helped us out," Canahan said. "The cooler temperature and higher humidity helped us have some containment."

There were 295,683 acres actively burning on Thursday. The day before, the major fires had blackened 331,000 acres -- roughly half the size of Rhode Island, Kopack said. The total Tuesday was closer to 331,000 acres.

Light rain Wednesday allowed firefighters to make direct attacks on seven major fires burning on more than 150,000 acres in eastern Washington. The wet weather slowed the growth of most fires.

Firefighters in Montana also were also watching wind speeds, and officials warned residents in the mountains north of Yellowstone National Park to prepare to evacuate if a 4,000-acre blaze near the tiny town of Emigrant continued to spread.

"Weather, fuels and topography are all working against us at this point," said Steve Frye, incident commander near Emigrant. The wind has also doubled pushed the size of a wildfire west of Glacier National Park to nearly 2,500 acres.

In all, nearly 29,000 firefighters and support personnel were working on Western fires Wednesday.